Re:U.S. Secretly Halted JPMorgan’s Growth for Years
by icelancer on Monday October 29, 2018 @06:14AM
(#18326235)
> The government should have eaten all those banks, turfed the execs, and the sold them later for a massive profit a few years later basically wiping out most shareholder value and taking the profit into public coffers. That would actually be closer to capitalism than the bailout program.
The closest thing to capitalism that would have also massively benefited people - not major corporations - would be to let capitalism do its thing, aka punish those who overleveraged via market-based mechanisms.... like bankruptcy and liquidation. Those who didn't do stupid shit would benefit from the flood of assets.
We controlled variance - how well we did this is arguable - at a massive cost. Maybe it was worth it, but let's not act like there wasn't a huge cost to bear.
Re:U.S. Secretly Halted JPMorgan’s Growth for Years
by sonnyblarney on Monday October 29, 2018 @02:32PM
(#18329926)
Yes but if you let the banks go down, they would have taken each other down, and the entire economy would have gone down a black hole.
That's why I said 'closest thing' to capitalism, because capitalism would have eaten itself in 2008.
A better bailout would have been to wipe out bank shareholders and nationalize the banks for a few years.
2) The 'big whale' you didn't mention is the trillion dollars in crap mortgages that are sitting on the Fed's balance sheet at face value. That more than doubled the Fed's assets, and those assets were way overvalued ... basically making the USD backed by crap. Which is a 'cost' to anyone using USD, esp. those issuing debt in USD, like the Government, i.e. taxpayer.
So while it's fine and good some of the bailouts were above board, there's too much of it that wasn't.
The government should have eaten all those banks, turfed the execs, and the sold them later for a massive profit a few years later basically wiping out most shareholder value and taking the profit into public coffers. That would actually be closer to capitalism than the bailout program.