[coryrc]

2008 was caused, in part, by the governments deciding many "banks" were "too big to fail".

The fix was for the government to pick some winners, coercively lend them money and force them to buy the failing banks.

Now we have fewer, bigger banks. People who were conservative with money, saved instead of over-leveraging, did not get to buy assets cheaply, because the government propped up asset prices with unlimited, cheap money.

And TARP did eventually produce weak positive returns. So I'm glad they didn't lose money, but I'm not happy I was prevented from buying fire sale assets. I'm also not happy residential housing prices are 2x what they were in 2010 (and still well over 1.5x the peak of the bubble).

[throw0101c]

> 2008 was caused, in part, by the governments deciding many "banks" were "too big to fail".

Perhaps worth noting that Ben Bernanke, who was the chair of the Fed at the time, was/is one of the most top experts on Great Depression (it's the work he later won the Nobel Prize for). So as bad as the GFC was, Bernanke thought it could get really bad and pushed for measures that he probably thought would prevent another 1930s scenario.

[coryrc]

So, the NPE isn't a real Nobel Prize :) but if the only allowable decisions are to concentrate wealth at the top, then we're just delaying and amplifying the collapse.

[Aurornis]

> but I'm not happy I was prevented from buying fire sale assets.

This is another common misconception about bailouts: That if the government hadn’t stepped in, individuals would have been better somehow or been able to take advantage of a collapsing economy for personal gain.

You wouldn’t be buying fire sale assets and getting great personal returns. That would have gone to corporations, family offices, and people in higher tax brackets.

[pjc50]

> I'm not happy I was prevented from buying fire sale assets

People who want a society-wide crisis so they can profit off it are far more morally reprehensible than people who said "we'll loosen the mortgage criteria a bit so people can buy houses, houses always go up in value right?"

[coryrc]

Uh, no, we're having a generational crisis because wages are flat and rent cost has been growing for decades. That's quite reprehensible. Unfortunately, in our push for home ownership, we now have a majority of people being homeowners and opposed to lowering prices, and a few companies who can make a profit lobbying to ensure prices only go up.