[Vision2020] rebate checks

[Tom Hansen]

It is not the banking industry, g-ster.
 
The S&L bailout concerned a considerable amount of savings and loans companies that made some serious unwise investments that (surprise!) failed.
 
>From the March 18, 1991 edition of the New York Times at:
 
http://tinyurl.com/47952d
"The lawmakers [Congress] have refused to give the [Bush] Administration open-ended financing for the savings and loan rescue, feeling burned by the experience of 1988, when savings regulators, facing a shortage of funds, bailed out almost 200 savings associations in deals now seen as giveaways. Those deals are expected to cost taxpayers more than $69 billion. "
 
And . . .
 
"The track record of the Resolution Trust Corporation is hardly reassuring. It has sold only about a quarter of the $120 billion in assets that it held at the end of last year from the 352 savings associations that it had seized, auditors at the General Accounting Office said. Its task has been complicated because the portfolio includes many undesirable investments, like raw land and high-risk 'junk bonds.'"
 
Maybe it's about time we got the rich off of welfare, dontcha think?  Or dontcha think?
 
Seeya round town, Moscow
 
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


From: jampot at roadrunner.comTo: ophite at gmail.comDate: Fri, 9 May 2008 06:09:42 -0700CC: vision2020 at moscow.comSubject: Re: [Vision2020] rebate checks



I am, for the most part, not a fan of corporate bail outs either. But since your question is how is bailing out the banking industry any less "welfare" than giving poor people money to spend on food a reply is in order. The banking industry pays huge amounts in taxes and employees many, many people. Poor people pay no taxes and employee no one. The government in its bail out of selected banks is returning a small percent of the tax money it received to the organization that has paid in significant amounts in the past and will pay more in the future. Poor people not so much. Banks kept open will continue to provide jobs. Poor people subsidized will only create more poor people. An argument can also be made that a portion of the banks problems were brought on by the government forcing them to extend credit to a much riskier pool of borrowers in the name of "fairness." The government, for all its faults, does not create poor people. It might encourage them to stay that way but it generally doesn't put them there in the first place.
 
g
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