Rath said:
Killiana1a said:
I have to disagree. Government bailouts of big companies is not capitalism. It reeks more of socialism with fascist tendencies.
If a company cannot survive without tax payer dollars, then it should fail because it is failing to put out a product consumers will buy. The consumers voted with their wallet, while Government said, "Oh noes you have 2 million union employees, we Democrats don't want to lose your union votes, so we will bail you out because we don't want to lose an election!"
All of these epitomize "too big to fail:"
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, and Chrysler were bailed out because the employees of those companies can be counted on to vote Democrat. The blue collar union boys especially, but it gets a little bit murkier with the quasi public/private corporations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
AIG on the other hand is another beast. If the US Government let AIG fail, then it would have wreaked absolute HELL on the international banking system. AIG in many cases was as big if not bigger in Europe than in the US. AIG had to be bailed out to save globalization.
If AIG failed, you would see conservative Democrats like myself saying, "I told ya so! Globalization is nothing but cheaper goods at Wal-Mart and a year round produce department at Safeway, while the American worker sees his/her living wage blue collar/white collar/manufacturing job exported to third world countries such as China, India, the Philippines, and on. Now that AIG has failed, lets bring those jobs back home."
Then again, this never happened as all were bailed out, while the US housing market continues to see record lows and an intolerable unemployment rate of 10%.
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The bailouts were very much started by George Bush. He was not in any way or form a Democrat. Also Freddie and Fannie failing would have done at least as much damage to the financial markets as AIG failing, those companies were (and still are) absurdly intertwined into the financial dealings of all the major players.
And I fail to see how bailouts are fascist..?
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Yes, the TARP bailout for the banking industry was started and passed during the last months of GW Bush's administration.
If you recall with fascism, one of the leading indicators is a collusion of interest between Government and Business where the Government is in a position to tell specific companies how they should be run. We saw this with GM/Chrysler where the Obama administration was active in getting rid of GM's CEO and replacing him.
Government bailouts are entirely antithetical to capitalism. Your conservative types drone "Bailouts saved capitalism" is just utter BS. In a true capitalistic market, which we often see at the local level with small business, businesses either succeed or fail on their own merits.
"Too big to fail" is a complete socialistic/capitalistic perversion where those businesses "too big to fail" take unncessary risks and unwise business decisions because they know with their multi-million dollar per year K Street lobbying firms, they will be able to buy enough influence and votes to be bailed out when their business decisions come home to roost.
