I'm sorry you guys, but bankruptcy isn't a magical fairy tale land where every problem is solved. And we were not looking at one or two large firms going bankrupt, we were looking at ten to twenty that could have gone bankrupt. Not to mention bankruptcy for some of these financial institutions would have taken years.
Hell, people at Lehman Brothers are still simply hoping that it will take them less than two years to exit bankruptcy. Yes, Lehman Brothers is still in bankruptcy and plans to be there until at least 2010. This article is from January:
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/lehman-hopes-for-bankruptcy-exit-within-2-years/
Lehman Hopes For Bankruptcy Exit Within 2 Years
Lehman Brothers said on Wednesday it hoped to exit bankruptcy protection in the next 18 to 24 months, but the judge overseeing the case warned that more international coordination would be necessary to meet that goal.
Like I said, the stock market lost close to 40% of its value after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, and it wasn't even that big of a firm in relative terms to some of the other financial institutions which were close to bankruptcy. It would have been a bloodbath on the stock market if other firms would have gone down at the same time.
I like NJ5's analogy about a leaky boat. Well guess what, patching the leaks is a hell of a lot better than just letting the boat sink. And a collapse of the financial sector would have been like dropping several anchors through the boat.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
