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by danenania 5416 days ago
"The whole financial system and everybody that depends on it was a beneficiary of the bailouts. If everything collapsed, everybody would have suffered."

A narrative convenient for powerful banks that was created by powerful banks and allied politicians. People have suffered and continue to suffer because of the crimes these institutions have committed. Propping up their corpses only helps the criminals who created the situation. Clearing out bad businesses so that new ones can take their place is a central pillar of capitalism. If you really believe a bunch of billionaires who claim the world's going to end if they lose their billions, well, you're gullible at best. Far from forestalling suffering, the continued operation of these entities and their influence on legislation perpetuates it. Their collapse is the best thing we could hope for, even if it causes short term turbulence.
2 comments
MikeCapone 5416 days ago
That all sounds very good, but I'm sorry to say that without a banking system, everything in our society stops working, and the small guy would get hurt a lot more than billionaires.
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danenania 5416 days ago
Without a banking system? The idea is to have a banking system that works and follows the law and doesn't require trillions in handouts to stay solvent, not no banking system.
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MikeCapone 5416 days ago
I totally agree. But that wasn't the choice that people were faced with in 2008.
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Locke1689 5416 days ago
The entire US financial system is based on credit and liquidity. Clearly something had to be done. Do I agree that the bailout was the best way to do that? No. But a timely bad plan was better than an untimely good one.

By the way, the argument that nothing needed to be done is opposed to practically every economics departments' opinion in the country. Maybe you know more about economics than we all guessed, but I think it's time you show a PhD instead of arm-chairing here.

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danenania 5416 days ago
The something that clearly needed to be done was to make the perpetrators pay for the damages of their crimes, not the victims. If the US financial system collapsed, there would be a deflationary shock and the short term high unemployment associated with an economic realignment, but the country would be much healthier financially in the long term. Instead the crisis is simply being dragged out, with the inevitable day of reckoning certain to be much worse because of it.

The amount of money the US has pumped into its corrupt financial system is enough to put its entire population on welfare for years. A sane approach would have been to let the banks fail, let the markets tank, and ease the transition as needed with bottom-up debt relief and aid.

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