[talltimtom]

> they gave free money to Goldman Sachs!

Well the facts are that they gave loans which are paying off when you look at the list. So the real “injustice” here is that the government went into the lending business and “stole profits” that otherwise would have stayed in the financial sector. Yet they only did so because the entire financial sector was devoid of liquidity to fix the situation. As for “what about schools!” And similar, well the investments in the financial sector which are now paying out can be used in these areas. Not going through with the bailout, putting all the money into the education system and watching as the entire country goes into a recession would not have procided eventual payouts that could be reinvested into the financial system down the line. When your house is on fire, you don’t gain anything from renovating the facade.

[humhumhum]

The problem with this view is twofold:

- what was the agreed rate of return at the time the loan was given?

- To maintain your image: why was the house on fire? Was it perhaps because of the enormous centralization of the financial market in the previous decades, combined with a massive deregulation, starting in the 80s? (your facade comment rings odd given the Grenfell Tower disaster)

The loans were given because the large financial institutions weren't able to make the profits they promised to their shareholders. The money which, no matter how you look at it, was free at the time, was an intervention in order to mediate the profit issue. That now ten years after the fact some of this money came back (of course shareholder returns were always prioritized during these years), is not a success by any means neither in terms of ROI nor in any others I could come up with.

Indicating that opportunity costs that are related to central government tasks in a democracy (education, health, infrastructure) are some form of luxury, only normalizes oligarchic structures.

[humhumhum]

Sorry that I split my answer here, but for some weird reason many educated people I've met said something like this:

> As for “what about schools!” And similar, well the investments in the financial sector which are now paying out can be used in these areas.

No one who says this should be trusted with money in my opinion, I'm sorry. But forgetting about the fact that democratic governments are not businesses and assuming that this is just a profit maximizing activity:

The obvious alternative would have been to take the whole money and inject it directly into the economy across all sectors. Make the grossest simplification: just buy all the DOW stocks. That way the ROI would at least have been somewhere decent. Don't get me wrong, it would still have been an absolute insult to democratic ideals, but hey, at least we would have gotten some cash....

I honestly don't understand how intelligent people come up with this argument... perhaps that says something about me more than about all those people I heard saying this... so really, please, help and educate me on this one, mate.