A Ledgie wants to know: Economy Edition

[HejiraNYC]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

How exactly was Bear Stearns bailed out? The company was worth tens of billions of dollars and got sold for $262 million. Their office tower on Madison was worth $1.3 billion, not to mention the other viable assets of the firm. So, Bear Stearns was most certainly not bailed out. Rather the sale to JP Morgan was a fire sale that stopped a run on a bank. JP Morgan will make billions off of this. Hopefully, they structured it so that the $30 billion or so in Fed backing for the mtg. securities will have to be repaid is they turn out to be good, which is unlikely.

True, Bear Stearns is history. However, the House of Cards/ponzi scheme was bailed out with government money, and JP Morgan Chase just happened to be the one and only company willing to stand up and take on this catastrophe with the help of taxpayer money. And about this so-called 30 billion-dollar "loan," do you honestly think that it will ever get paid back?

But, your point is interesting and, quite frankly, very conservative. You are endorsing a free maket with no govt. interderence, which is the best method or correcting the market, though it also is the harshest. It is the harshest because it provides no stability to the markets and corrections turn into panics. So, some govt. interference is required IMO.

Yes and no. We need an open market; however it needs to be tightly regulated, to the point where disasters like this would be prevented. But what's galling about all of this is the way Wall Streeters were such open market capitalists on the way up, but suddenly have become socialists on the way down. They are indeed having their cake and eating it too. Not only should Wall Street take on a big giant IOU for all of this, the Federal Bank should fall completely under the control the U.S. government (contrary to popular belief, it is indeed a private organization with Wall Street insiders on their board). As for the markets, I think they should correct without government intervention, even if it means they crash. If the government intervenes in bad times, doesn't it also mean that the government and taxpayers should share in the profits during the good times too? One or the other, folks!

Interestingly, one of the primary reasons NOLA is not rebuilt is the people there are arguing about what to do. There are big plans to redo many neighborhoods, but the homeowners, city, state, and Feds cannot agree on issues of property rights. I will say this though - much progress has happened, though much remains to be done.

True, however, with the proper funding and leadership, NOLA would be much further along today. In any case the bottom line is that leadership, money and resources were focused on waging a losing war (based on lies and greed) in Iraq while people were dying unnecessarily and/or living in Third World conditions in our own country. What would Jesus have done?