I was for propping up the financial institutions because it was the easiest way, but the world would

[RB TexLa]

not have ended if we had let the banks and auto makers fail. I would have been harder but everything would have gone on.

[virgogal]

1. Not one nickel of taxpayer money should have gone to them and you are right--

everything would have eventually moved on.

[RB TexLa]

2. A few trillion and basically makes it a twenty instead of thirty year recovery

[HughMoran]

4. So instead of ruining most of my teenagers adult lives, it would have ruined all of it

strange logic.

[notesdev]

7. twenty instead of two, you mean

all the intervention just makes the problem worse... it's a debt problem and intervention is all borrowed money, a total disaster.

In this case the proper action was to do nothing and let the Goldmans of the world fall apart, and we would have done just fine (if not better) without them when all was said and done.

[RB TexLa]

9. No, that's not what I meant or I would have typed that.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. It would have been a helluva lot easier if they'd been left to fail months ago.

Now they've sucked billions and trillions from OUR economy, and we're never going to get that money back.

Some of us knew that back then.


I'm glad you're realizing it now, but it would be nice if you acknowledge that some of us were right.



Tansy Gold, who finds a lot of this Schadenfreude very bitter indeed

[RB TexLa]

6. I'm not acknowledging that, just saying everything would have still recovered without the banks, GM,

AIG. It was still the easiest way to go.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. Easier then, but much, much, MUCH harder in the long run

the failure is inevitable, and the longer it's delayed, the harder it's gonna be and the harder for the survivors to recover.

The Depression ushered in by the 1929 crash lasted right up until the start of WW2 in 1942. That's a long time. Imagine what it will be like now, with a gutted manufacturing base, when the crash finally happens.

The money isn't there. It's all been borrowed. The government has the choice of paying China back or of defaulting. Can you imagine what will happen in either case? Think of Germany in 1933.

No, it's foolishness to think that taking the "easy" way of bailing out the banks ever made anything easier, except for the banksters.


TG

[TexasObserver]

5. I was against propping up the failing banks and AIG.

I'm much more concerned about the auto industry, which we need. We don't need all the big banks, and having a few fail would have wiped out the control that those banks and their management have.

[Warpy]

10. They should have been nationalized

but this country will always do the wrong thing until it is absolutely forced to do the thing it should have done in the beginning.

Nationalizing them would have brought in teams of auditors and you can bet there would be quite a few men facing prison by now.

Instead, the taxpayers put an expensive bandaid on a bad system and the worst of the perps, the thieves in the mortgage industry and the hedge fund wonderboys who turned their fraudulent loans into "securities," have walked off into the sunset for retirement in the Caribbean.

When the commercial real estate loan scam finally blows up, maybe we'll finally start doing the right thing.

[imdjh]

11. I would feel better about the whole thing, if bankers were being dragged through the streets.

Call me barbaric, but I don't think a jobless recovery should be bloodless.

[truedelphi]

16. Gosh, i know how you feel.

As a pacifist I get annoyed that i feel this way, but GRHrrrrr. People have had strokes and heart attacks and suicide levels remain higher, all because of these upper 1 percent scum suckers whose greed has destroyed our nation.

[Louisiana1976]

12. Why is it that when the banks and car companies threaten that they're about to fail,

Obama practically writes them a check--yet when New Orleans needs help and someone at the town meeting there asks Obama when the people there will get it, Obama says it has to go through Congress, etc.?

[RB TexLa]

14. Americans are never going to care about Louisiana.

Doesn't matter if it's a Democrat or Republican in charge.

[Dawson Leery]

13. The banks and AIG should have gone

to bankruptcy court and the FDIC.
These tax payer bailouts were a horrible mistake and we will be paying for them for many years.

[truedelphi]

15. RB I don't think you understand the problem. The Bailout was needed BUT and this is a big but

The government should have never handed the money over to the four or five top banks, no strings attached.

Instead, the protocols for saving the system using regionally state charterd banks, one to each region, should have been followed. These laws are already on the books, and they served us well, back at the time of the Savings and Loan Crisis. And those laws also mandate that consumer loans, small business loans etc be made to the people in the community of the regional banks.

Also, by giving the money over to the four or five biggest institutions, this means that those banks not only can but MUST honor their contracts. Whereas if we had circumvented them, we would not have vast uncountable amounts of money going to the banks so they can repay each other and themselves for their bad debts. (And of course their bad debts are basically failed gambling debts vis a vis the Credit Default Swaps and other failed derivative gambles.)

Brooksley Born has stated for Frontline PBS hour long special that she thinks the derivative losses could be as high as 600 trillion dollars. This means that the 12 trillion so far already handed over or sitting and waiting it out as guarantees are just the tip of the iceberg. And 600 trillion dollars is a simply unpayable amount.

Our own economy is a mere 132 to 14 trillion dollar economy depending on how you look at it and how much credit you give to the underground economy. And whether it is a good or bad year. So you can see how much of the crisis may still be waiting in the wings - Lord help us if it is true that there is another 588 trillion dollars to go and Obama and his people think we have to make good on all of it.

[flyarm]

17. The most madening thing to me is these bastards keep giving themselves bonus's

who fails this miserable and screws the nation and then gets a bonus for the utter failure and corruption? And who would allow it with other people's hard earned money? And at the same time tightening resourses to those who bailed your ass out!

[Greyhound]

18. Certainly drastic steps needed to be taken to forestall the immediate panic,

but picking winners and losers was the very worst option except for, arguably, doing nothing. There were many options available to stabilize the national economy, but _Shrub & Co. chose to literally pay 100% the gambling losses for the thieves that did it and then Obama chose to continue that non-strategy.

In the short-term, we have somewhere between 7 and 10 million homes coming into foreclosure this year, a commercial real estate crisis that is getting no press or attention in DC, and then we have the derivatives tsunami moving up on us. We're funding the soft landing and following pillage for the guilty.

[truedelphi]

20. People are quite unaware that during the last Depression, a total of 34 states

Had laws on the books forbiding foreclosures.

Thirty four states.

Where are the state legislatures on this issue? Presumably they are as bought out as the Congress and the Executive Office.

[Ignis]

21. Good call, and great point.

Wouldn't it be nice to see our state legislatures step in, rather than leaving this mess all up to the feds?

[truedelphi]

22. Yeah it really would be. They could start by threatening to pull

The state charters of any banks, credit unions or savings and loans etc that bring about foreclosures.

When a foreclosed property is sold to a bank, who then sells it off for less than 60% of the amount that the mortgage holder was scrambling to deal with, one really has to wonder.

[Ignis]

23. And it would have a very dramatic, immediate, local effect.

But every damned politicians is so afraid of appearing "anti-business" these days. :eyes:

[TheKentuckian]

19. The banks should have been bailed out but they should have been nationalized or failing that

demanding terms placed on the whole industry. I did not advocate a blank check with no strings attached but rather not allowing the entire system to crash. I understand the resentment, anger, frustration, and general aggravation with the whole debacle but the Hooverism still seems short sighted and silly to me. Doing nothing was the only worse idea than what we actually did. Unemployment would be like 50% at best due to all the businesses going under in the wake of an utterly fubar credit system.

Paulson's corporate communism was horrible but doing nothing would be even worse.