akuma587 said:
Even good banks could have been hurt by the bad banks failing. People were running from anything with the word financial institution attached to it, even if those companies were in great shape. This was causing even banks that were healthy by relative standards to face potential collapse. The market doesn't operate on perfect information and often operates on complete irrationality. Even a good company can go bankrupt. And some of the bnaks that bought up these other banks (see Bank of America who bought up Merril Lynch and Countrywide) were hit harder than anyone. Loaning to mom and pop in small towns is important, but that isn't what keeps a global economy running. And a small to mid level bank cannot just jump up the ranks overnight to a multi-national lending institution that is an intricate part of the global credit market. Banks do way more today than they did 50 years ago, and if anything banks failing now can be more catastrophic than it would have been 50 years ago. And as to job creation, renewable energy creates a higher percentage of jobs domestically compared to say oil industries who are deeply rooted in foreign markets. And there was a lot more sectors of the economy where money went than just renewable energy or construction. Education and healthcare received a lot of money, and those aren't the kinds of jobs that are easily shipped overseas. And the stimulus was just as much or more about preventing more job losses as it was creating new jobs. The education and construction industries were looking at massive layoffs, upwards of 3-4 million when taken together. Creating a new job may be well and good, but it isn't that useful if you are simultaneously losing jobs you already have.
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Renewable Energy vs Oil is a false arguement.
Not many peoples houses are run on oil... and not many cars will be run on renewable energy. A lot however run on coal. Renewable energy will likely cost jobs in areas with coal since you won't need people to mine stuff anymore.
Healthcare... will mostly just replace existing healthcare jobs. Hospitals haven't actually been hurt much by the financial crisis. Unless you mean insurance type jobs which are eaisly shipped overseas. Outside of insurance sellers.
Education... won't really create more jobs as we already have enough jobs for teaching.