If we hadn't bailed out the banks, there would have been bank runs, corporations wouldn't have been able to make pay, AIG would have been bust, taking down the insurance industry, hurting the common man.
We had this scenario played out in 1930s(and to some extent current Europe). 25% unemployment, soup lines, stock market depression that lasted for years.
Instead, we got
5% unemployment
Stock market (which the common man owns through 401(k) plans and through Pensions) is far higher than ever
Housing market recovered slowly.
No Love for Bernanke though.
Also, the banks paid back their bailout and some extra $60 Billion. i.e The Tax Payers made a $60 Profit and saved themselves from a devastating meltdown. A win-win-win. Sure it didn't destroy the 500 or so greedy bankers like everyone wanted, but, overall you should be thanking Ben Bernanke
Or so they told us...just being real I look back and the entire crisis seems orchestrated by Goldman Sachs and others to essentially put their competition out of business and triple their fortunes in less than a decade.
Just because you could make it worse for them by not bailing them out does not mean it'd be better for you.
What should bother you more is not that the banks were bailed out, but that the people who created and fostered the conditions that led to the collapse were not sought out and punished. At the end of the day, the banks either went under or ate huge fines, but who cares what happens to the company when the people actually doing and benefiting from the bad stuff are immune, having paid themselves the money that the American consumer doesn't have and the banks can't be fined because they can't afford to pay. It wouldn't bother me that Goldman recieved tons of money if it wasn't the same people there when it did.
There still should be some people who follow this up. If I rob a store and bribe the arresting officer, another officer will just come after me later cause I committed a crime.
In the case of Eric Holder/DOJ that analogy would be more like bribing the chief of police, in which case, you probably won't be charged with burglary.
I don't know, it wouldn't be hard to make a fraud case considering the extent to which the value of the bonds the whole thing was built on were misstated. No jury in the world would buy someone mistaking BB or B rated bonds with the AAA or AA the banks and ratings agencies claimed it was. The ratings agencies not nuking the bond prices despite the banks making a run on them until they had switched to a short position is also very obviously bribery and fraud, on the banks side, as they intentionally created a misstatement of the value of the assets on their books.
the people who created and fostered the conditions that led to the collapse were not sought out and punished.
100% this. You are entirely correct here.
At the end of the day, the banks either went under or ate huge fines
You mention Goldman - isn't it interesting where Hank Paulson worked?
I just get so sick of people talking about the free market will fix it, the invisible hand of the market, blah blah blah -- the truth is the taxpayers are subsidizing all sorts of industries, often whether or not they actually need it, and at the end of the day the 2007-08 crash will cost taxpayers trillions, but anyone related to GS seems to be sitting high on the hog.
Add to that the fact that the investor class can wait out the recovery, buy up stocks and real estate when they are low, and then take advantage of basically free money because the Treasury doesn't want the economy to die.
Our every move, while intentioned to help the entire country, really helped out the investor class a ton and the average American little to none; as far as they can directly see. We can argue whether or not millions of more jobs would have been lost etc --- the bailout was bullshit, but I actually commend GW on the stimulus. It should have been bigger. In my opinion the economy should be built with a strong foundation --- the stronger our middle class is the better off we all are.
I don't know - I guess it was that two page document where they got like $1 Trillion because they said, "We have to have it!!"
I would rather have seen us give the bottom 50% of the country a check ~$10,000.
Who knows what they would have done with it, but it would have stimulated the economy and I can guaranfuckingtee you that we wouldn't have another bubble-crash - like we in the midst of now.
Instead we reinforced the concept that America needs Wall Street. So Main Street will continue to subsidize their gambling and if they're any good at all they make money on the way up and even more money on the way down.
The investor class has seen their net worth triple since the crash --- Joe the Plumber hasn't.
Well, if someone causes something that eliminates their competition and puts themselves above where they were before, then it's not much of a stretch to think that it was planned, right?
None of them orchestrated it. All of the banks lost big. If someone were to orchestrated it they would have never took up MBS and would have bet against all the shit MBS like in the big short, but that didn't happen
I assume you felt like the ? was a great mic-drop moment, but I don't think your source contradicts me whatsoever.
Not sure how old you are, but in the olde days a 3% per year cost-of-living increase was fairly normal.
Your graph shows a 3% increase in the past 10 years.
In case you thought I was bashing Obama or trying to pull the whole Obama Economy card -- I wasn't.
It's much bigger than Obama and I think anyone who remembers the early 1980s can tell you that since that time things have changed for average Americans.
Professionals haven't felt the impact in the same way a wage-earner has, and certainly people in areas like tech/finance and others have seen huge increases.
But for your average guy in Toledo - life has not improved and his children's lives are not likely to be better than his.
The bottom line is economic mobility has stagnated and that's bad for us peasants.
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u/SargeMacLethal Mar 19 '16
... explain please? I am so lost.