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What is your opinion on the government bailouts?
I personally don't think that the government bailout programs are doing anyone any good. What do you think? What are the positives that have come out of these bailouts?
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Given time, and your infinate patience, I could spend an hour writing on this topic. I believe strongly that without what you call bailouts and the strengthing of the banking system by the Treasury, we would have been back in the stone age quickly in the US and potentially around the world.
The collapse of the banking and auto industries in 2008/9 were events that major portions of our economy could not have withstood, which would have occasioned a further collapse in economic activity which would have spiraled downward. By avoiding runs on banks and money market funds, the government stabilized people's wealth and kept them calm despite the outside turmoil. By propping up the auto companies, we still have an auto industry today, which would not have happened had the firms been allowed to fail in an economic environment that none could have predicted. The "rescue" of AIG falls into the same category; the shareholders of AIG were pretty much wiped out, but the institution continues to exist which again propped up the collapsing financial system.
The shareholders of the firms that were allowed to fail, such as Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, Merrill Lynch and others did feel the pain. The government rescued the institution, not the shareholders, who in the case of GM, for example, lost everything.
Let's give the government, and its political leaders credit for having the courage to take action which a situation as we survived had never happened before in their lifetimes. The government did not repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression and managed to get us back on recovery without the 30% plus unemployment of that time. Thank God.... Wall Street has responded with a decent recovery in the stock market which is now helping folks again save for retirement. You don't see the Wall Street folks criticizing the bailout; while a lot of them lost their jobs, we still have a functioning share trading system. Imagine if that were not the case and all your retirement saving were just paper.
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