[jannotti]

I think this does a good job of presenting the financial issues properly without too much rhetoric. The most important point was that if these corporations need a bailout to survive, then the stockholders have already lost their money. The bailout preserves the corporation, for the good of the country and/or workers, not to prevent stock holders from seeing losses.

One place where I am in less agreement is when the authors says that the government should be paid back and retain its share of ownership (I think that's what the article implied). The author wants this to be an equity investment. Those are not paid back. Any dividend would be shared in proportion to ownership (previous stockholders may have been quite diluted, of course).

And then my final question is, should the government retain equity indefinitely? Might we imagine paying out shares to citizens?