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"Free-Marketers" and the Bank Bailout
The Post tells us how the people who designed the bank bailout were committed to the free market. Interestingly, the key decisions that they made gave the banks much better terms than they could have received from the free market.
Since the post doesn't really know the inner most thoughts of the bailout designers, let's try an alternative hypothesis. They wanted to help the banks as much as possible with public money, yet they wanted to rationalize this give away of taxpayer dollars as somehow consistent with the free market. Their alleged belief in the free market is simply a cover for efforts to aid the rich.
I don't know if this alternative hypothesis is true, but the Post certainly does not know that the story it presented to readers as fact is true. How about we just get the news media to skip the speculation about people's ideologies and just report on where the money went.
--Dean Baker
COMMENTS (9)
...actions speak much, much louder than words !
...and of course, words are very, very cheap in the MSM.
Posted by: farente | November 8, 2008 2:42 PM
People who rob U will say anything to enlist co-operation.
Posted by: Mike Meyer | November 8, 2008 4:23 PM
Cui bono indeed.
Posted by: Hobbes | November 8, 2008 4:25 PM
Turning it over to a couple of thirty somethings to work out huh ? Brilliant.
Maybe that's why it's such a mess. Really gives new meaning to the term "free" market. Something Bushco has been working on, non-stop, for the last eight years and the Republicans for the last 30 years.
Posted by: Anonymous | November 8, 2008 7:12 PM
In a 'free market', no gov't bailout, all the top CEOs are out, all the equity 'investors' and bond holder 'investors' are wiped out.
Instead they all become welfare queens -- with none of the shame. From the article:
"''We wanted to prevent a collapse of the financial system of the United States.''
Well, why not have the regional Federal Reserve Banks start doing interbank lending at 1% more than others?
Why not have the Fed loan low cost money to banks that have already loaned out money in the last week or two -- bank loans out $10 mil to some company at 4%, gets a $10 mil loan from the Fed at 3% (or 1%).
Who needs the Big Banks, really? Only the rich, 'entitled' Harvard/ Yale/ Princeton/ Stanford grad CEOs who were uninterested in Japan's real estate bust of 1989. All of 20 years ago.
Bah.
Buy houses, not paper. Let the Big Banks fail.
There are too many banks, and bankers, because the money they were playing with is already gone. Poof.
The bailout is to minimize the pain for overpaid Big Bankers.
Posted by: Tom Grey | November 9, 2008 6:58 PM
A rose by any other name is still "Corporate Welfare."
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Posted by: Loan Broker Scam clintondonald39@yahoo.com | March 10, 2009 9:51 PM
Something Bushco has been working on, non-stop, for the last eight years and the Republicans for the last 30 years.
Posted by: GrantS | March 13, 2009 4:46 AM