Bailouts a good thing?
 

im confused on what side i should take, pro or con?

pro - if obama lets all these companies that failed just die, there will be millions of more unemployed people with no prospects of them getting new jobs anytime soon. the unemployed would place bigger burdens on govt. (unemployment & healthcare costs) & make the deficit swell anyway. so its better to bailout these companies, keep the economy as stable as possible & hope these failed companies get back on their feet. Airlines, banks & automakers have been bailed out before & they succeeded.

con - in the long run, the government is propping up failed economic models that are going to die anyway. There are plenty of banks & automakers that did not need to be bailed out. The ones needing bailouts were the ones that were badly managed & could not survive a recession. The point of recessions is to kill weak business so the fit get stronger. This rewards success. & bailing out Chrysler how many times now? is only costing the taxpayer money & interfering with mechanisms that keep the economy strong in the long run.

My liberal side says bailouts are the right move. My republican side says fuck no.

As a business person. Bails out are good people in a depression dont buy memberships. Im pissed at BO for being a pussy with the banks.

i don't think GM AIG or Chrysler will survive in their current forms & will be broken up into their profitable parts. It seems we should just let bankruptcy do the breakups as they do for any company & not put billions of dollars into these failed companies just to make shareholders & bondholders whole. Fuck them, they fucked everything up. The economy is shedding crazy jobs anyway as healthy companies are cutting just to be prepared for the worst. When AIG uses bailout money to pay their wall street bankers millions in bonuses, its obvious the bailouts are a joke, a robbery of the taxpayer. Somehow this is supposed to help us in the long run?

Do you want corrupt politicians deciding which of their cronies and supporters are going to get YOUR cash?

If not, then choose Option 2.

Both choices suck, but #2 essentially guarantees us a full blown economic depression.

I say, lets roll the dice and go with choice #1.

bankrupt them all like any other entity would have to do and let them restructure it or get the hell out of the way of progress

Just like the government rolled the dice with the subprime market?

Apples and oranges. The economy was in good shape before the government started fucking around with that shit. Not so this time around.

This time, it's like the patient who's presented with the choice of enduring a long and debilitating illness from which he may never fully recover, or volunteering for a procedure which promises a quick and full recovery.... but could kill him.

If it was my choice, and I was convinced that the odds were better than even, I'd go for the quick and full recovery.

That is only part of the story. Sure subprimes were bad but where they went really ugly is when banks like Washington Mutual saw that they could make millions giving the loans to anyone then reselling them. So they busted their asses to give as many subprimes as they could. Those that bought the loans then broke them up, resold them and over-leveraged those assets. I read that for every dollar in subprime mortgages there were 35 dollars in loans created. That has nothing to do with the government and everything to do with these companies coming up with bizarre and creative ways to make money out of thin air and eventually the house of cards crumbled.

I agree. Both may eventually take us in the same direction, but not bailing them out pretty much guarantees were are going to be in deep shit. If there is a chance that we could avoid that, I say take it. Maybe it won't work, but maybe it will.

I am worried that these companies will take the bailout money, recover and not learn their lessons and we will be back here again in another 10-12 years so if it works I hope there are some type of regulations or oversight put into place that helps us avoid this kind of issue again.

Given that it's been almost 80 years since private enterprise fucked up quite this much (i.e. 1929), I gotta figure that if the bailout(s) do work, it'll take longer than 10-12 years for things to get this fucking bad again.

At least I hope so.

I'm hopeful as well that they will learn their lesson and things will be normal for a while. It could be decades until something bad happens again, I just sometimes fear the worse and with today's technology and complex financial markets it seems like it is easier for people to do shady stuff that can bite you back.

the people in charge today, particularly bernanke, believe the great depression was extended because the govt did not do enough. i hear this over & over from obama, that we will do everything possible to keep the economy from crashing.

that sounds sensible, especially if GM is able to do something new & make a car people want to buy. But when details of bailouts come out, like million dollar bonuses for AIG, billions transfered to foreign banks to repay loans that are not in default, & Wagoner is getting a 20 million golden parachute, i fail to see how bailout money that is staying in rich peoples pockets is going to help the economy. It looks like a robbery instead.

Watching obama fire a private sector CEO & guaranteeing auto warranties makes me feel the govt is in territory it does not belong in. This is not a socialist economy but it seems like it is becoming one. When in my lifetime will we have a ruling class that says no to spending public money? That says senior citizens will not get social security? that local & state governments cannot count on federal dollars to keep their own finances afloat? That the pentagon cannot have 96 weapons programs, 70% of which are way overbudget & years overdue? & that banks who cause trillions in losses should have those losses covered by taxpayers?

America is spending itself to oblivion. & its very troubling that Obama appears to be to the left of Old Europe on this matter. When Germany & France, the ultimate in welfare states, is telling us we are spending too much, holy shit. Do we really want 60 - 80% tax rates in this country?