[quote=cabal] The main purpose of the bailouts were to defend this country against a threat large enough to be classified as a national security event. I don’t like it either but I agree with the experts that this was a necessary evil to prevent the country from an economic collapse of proportions large enough to seize fortune 500 companies, induce 30% unemployment, crash the stock market, in addition to all the other collateral effects. The tent enclave downtown would morph into whole shantytowns occupying every neighborhood park and crime would certainly skyrocket. [/quote]
This is where you and I will have to agree to disagree. I do not for a moment believe that they avoided calamity. They’ve only postponed it, prolonged it, and spread the damage across a wider swath of our economy. IMHO, the eventual consequences of the bailouts will be much worse than if they had left things alone, or at least if they had avoided rewarding the people who caused the “crisis” in the first place (borrowers, lenders, financial firms, etc.).
Mind you, I have always asserted that they would need to backstop the FDIC, SIPC and PBGC, in addition to increasing infrastructure spending and jobless/training programs. Yes, we would have had a severe downturn, but it would have been quick, and we could have begun working our way out of it in a much healthier way IF we had focused more on productive endeavors…instead of bailing out the liars and thieves.
The world was never going to end just because some banks (even major ones) collapsed. If foreign companies want to buy them, so be it. Foreign entities have purchased and now control much more important entities (IMHO) than banks. I want to see us move away from a reliance on the FIRE sectors, and move back into more productive uses of our country’s capital. We’ve squandered a tremendous opportunity to squash the very entities that have hollowed out our country’s economy and our way of life over the past few decades. I want to see the middle-class return. I want to see decent, living wages for a majority of the population. I want to see a severe reversal of the wealth divide that has destroyed us.
With the existing bailouts, we have rewarded the very people who have damaged us most. THAT is what I am so strongly opposed to.
