Let Them Fail, All Of Them
This goes for Citigroup, the Big 3 automobile manufacturers, and home owners. What ever happened to creative destruction? Why are responsible people and companies supposed to pay for people and companies that made poor decisions? I'll post more on this later - but right now, I'll simply say that I can't take much more of this bailout talk. I lost some money in the stock market this year, why isn't the government bailing me out? We are going down a slippery, slippery slope...
You sound a little angry. . . . welcome to the club - however, I can't say I agree with you if it is in fact true that letting 'em drown will have more terrible consequences for all of us. I prefer to say: investigate and put any capitalist criminals in jail, watch our billions like a hawk, and put any politians in jail who lie and secretly help their friends to the detriment of us all. That includes Paulson and Bush. And finally, make SURE this never happens again. This WAS avoidable. Capitalism is great, so long as excesses to our collective detriment are controlled. Boomer
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Every once in a while, I'll give you an unreasonable rant - it's cathartic. I'm not suggesting there should be no government intervention whatsoever. I am suggesting the government intervention thus far has been poorly constructed. At a minimum, Citi's equity holders should have lost everything and the management should have been taken out. I would have liked to have seen Citi chopped up and the pieces sold off to the highest bidders (i.e., companies that responsibly managed their risk). We should be thinking about stabilizing the banking system as a whole - not giving arbitrarily-selected individual companies sweetheart deals. You're dreaming if you think anyone is going to jail for this mess. It's too broad to push the blame on any one person or one group of people. No one has ever seen anything like this before - Paulson is just guessing at this point - on the hopes that doing something is better than doing nothing. Maybe he'll be right, who knows? As I've said before, no one really knows what to do.
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Why isin't anyone talking about the role unions play in this mess? (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97241728) I'm not saying bust up the unions, but not once have we heard about the negative impact of the UAW.
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The union contracts have to be rewritten if (when) the government bails out the Auto Mfgs. This is part of the reason why I think Chapter 11 might be a good idea. It would allow the companies to continue to operate, but force them to truly restructure. Given the credit crisis, the government would most likely have to offer financing for this to work, but it would be better than just propping them up in their current state. I worry about Obama and congress' willingness to stand up to the UAW. We'll see.
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