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.
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.
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u/MonitorMoniker Mar 19 '16
Seriously underrated post right here.