Bailout Money Wasted

[Rachmaninoff]

Yes I know that things like this:

[URL="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6782719&page=1"][U]Bailed Out Bank of America Sponsors Super Bowl Fun Fest[/U][/URL]

And this:

[URL="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31439493/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/"][U]Report: Bailed-out execs used jets for holidays[/U][/URL]

Are not only old news but expected. I honestly had no issues with the concept of a bailout, in theory, if handled correctly it could have done a lot of good. But I find it disgusting that in spite of efforts to curb excessive spending, they just do it anyway.

When I point this out to my friends and wonder if letting the government have a go at it would be a good idea, I often hear the counter that letting the government have more control would be no better. I don't really want to try that, but at the same time, I wonder why we even put up with this anymore.

Anyway, I find that I'm leaning more towards we should have just let them go bankrupt every time I read stuff on how they use tax money for parties and personal use of company jets.

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Well the bailout and stimulus money has been 'spent' and on the off chance that nobody here reads news cycles, you might be shocked to learn that absolutely nothing has changed except the amount of zeros on the end of the national debt.

And Obama's solution? Print money. Inflate the economy. Devalue the dollar and millions of dollars people have stored in their savings accounts. That's the ticket!

I'll agree that sometimes you have to spend money to earn money, but if you have no accountability [because you're the government] then you'll just spend money and not give a crap if you earn money later or not. I hate to be cynical, but I never thought bailout money would work. Ever. The few honest people that wanted it to work were just that. Too few, too late.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Allamorph]

[quote name='Rachmaninoff']Anyway, I find that I'm leaning more towards we should have just let them go bankrupt every time I read stuff on how they use tax money for parties and personal use of company jets.[/quote]
[FONT=Arial]I declared this sentiment when I first heard about the economy tanking and was scoffed at for being ignorant of how our economy's demise would essentially doom the rest of the world for the next decade.

Still haven't changed my mind.[/FONT]

[Nathan]

[FONT="Arial"]I don't have a problem with bailouts, or rather the principle. But I do find the lack of accountability a bit disheartening. I don't agree with the sentiment that it was a total waste and did no good at all.

However, I do agree with the sentiment that the worst offenders, should have been strung up by their toes and left to dry, or whatever. People like that clearly haven't learned a thing. [/FONT]

[Gavin]

[quote name='Nathan'][FONT="Arial"]I don't have a problem with bailouts, or rather the principle. But I do find the lack of accountability a bit disheartening. I don't agree with the sentiment that it was a total waste and did no good at all.

However, I do agree with the sentiment that the worst offenders, should have been strung up by their toes and left to dry, or whatever. People like that clearly haven't learned a thing. [/FONT][/QUOTE]

[SIZE="1"]This. However I would substitute the word "toes" for something else in dealing with the worst offenders. Sadly however a lack of accountability when dealing with the banking sector seems to be a worldwide bane.
[/SIZE]

[Allamorph]

I don't have a problem with bailouts, or rather the principle.

I don't have a problem with Communism . . . or rather, the principle.

The problem isn't the theory of them. Everything works in theory. And the Federal Government has assumed the debt of the masses before; it can still function in massive amounts of debt, so offering bailout money was a legitimate move.

I was opposed to the bailout not because it was bad in theory, but because it was impossible to keep uncorrupted in practice.

And, well.... Edited February 7, 2015 by Allamorph

[Drizzt Do'urden]

There was/are so many other moves to make in this situation that its sad. As it has been said over and over even in the first couple posts in this thread, not setting stringint guidlines as to the use of the money was in fact...idiotic.

Its getting to the point where the only alternative is, as Allamorph said, the one thing that should've been done in the first place. Let them fall!

As the big companies like Bank of America fail and have to sell off their mortages, smaller companies who have not yet fallen victim to corruption of seven/eight figure salaries will then rise up to take the reins.

Riding it out is what we're left with, and when China comes to collect we will be riding it out with heavier "recovery" taxes on our shoulders.

[Aaryanna]

[FONT="Tahoma"][COLOR="DarkGreen"][QUOTE=Allamorph][FONT=Arial]I was opposed to the bailout not because it was bad in theory, but because it was impossible to keep uncorrupted in practice.

And, well....[/FONT][/QUOTE]Basement Cat, that's true of just about [I]anything[/I] these days. There's no such thing as no corruption. o_O I don't think it's a good enough reason to object to it. Though I do think it can be part of it, the biggest being those with the worst record, like the stupid Bank of America should have just been allowed to topple.

But this is my opinion based on my limited understanding of how the entire damn thing works. =_= I'm still mad at my state for refusing aid that would have actually made a difference.

Because unlike some of what I've read on this bailout, that money [I]had[/I] to be spent certain ways, period. And they were mad and claiming Obama was being over controlling. They probably just wanted to waste it on crap like Bank of America did. [/COLOR][/FONT]

[Allamorph]

Basement Cat, that's true of just about anything these days. There's no such thing as no corruption. o_O I don't think it's a good enough reason to object to it.

You say this like I'm somehow unaware.

Give me something better to work with instead of a very very broad-angled rebuttal that does very little actual good. Edited February 7, 2015 by Allamorph

[Aaryanna]

[FONT="Tahoma"][COLOR="DarkGreen"][QUOTE=Allamorph][FONT=Arial]You say this like I'm somehow unaware.

Give me something better to work with instead of a very [I]very[/I] broad-angled rebuttal that does very little actual good.[/FONT][/QUOTE] I'm wondering why your using it. I know you're aware of it, that's not my point really.

For example, the assistance that our state turned down, had to be used on specific things. They couldn't hand out bonuses to anyone, they couldn't shift it to be spent on something frivolous. Their answer to that was to refuse it and let people who needed it suffer. And it's no surprise that they are simply finding new things to tax instead. :rolleyes:

So bailout money can be handled efficiently, it's the politicians and business people who refuse to set the limits that would prevent it. Or they refuse to accept the limits or terms that come with accepting it in the first place.

Though if that's what you meant by impossible, then I'd have to agree. Since it seems like the idea of being accountable, is something they refuse to do. [/COLOR][/FONT]

[Raiha]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Well the fact that nobody has mentioned this must mean that nobody actually knows. A fact that doesn't surprise me, but somehow leads me to believe that like Aaryanna says, nobody really knows how the damn thing works.

A Pay Czar.

[quote]The Obama administration recently appointed Kenneth Feinberg, "Special Master for Compensation" to ensure that companies receiving federal bailout funds are abiding by executive-pay guidelines, according to people familiar with the matter.[/quote]

Now this begs the question, [b]Why didn't someone think of attaching strings like that BEFORE we threw money at the problem?[/b] I don't know, I'm not the bloated, ponderous, overarching, self-protecting and propagating, top-down management federal government. The fact that they've appointed such a position, which I will henceforth refer to as "Massuh" means that the original bailout money had no specific requirements for usage attached to it. They just assumed, like morons, that the people receiving it wouldn't just use it to upgrade the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's a great idea, in theory. But I don't believe there's a constitutional argument for bailouts any more than I believe there's one for a car czar, pay czar, weather czar, or any other appointed position from the Obama administration that levies all reasonable executive control to a person. That isn't the president.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[Sabrina]

[FONT="Tahoma"]I think it's too soon to say the bailout failed. Things like what you linked to Darren, don't really paint the entire picture. They do show that mistakes were made, but it's far too soon to see if this will really stabilize the economy or not.

Much like expecting the President to be able to change stuff for gays so quickly, expecting real economic turn around in such a short time is kind of unrealistic. It's not a quick process. It took us more than half a year to create the mess in the first place. Recessions aren't reversed so easily and just because the efforts don't produce immediate visible results, doesn't mean that things aren't improving. I think we'll get a much better picture say eight to ten years down the road.

This kind of behavior is only highlighting more of what needs to be changed in order for things to really improve. The more stunts corporations pull like that, the more they prove that stricter legislation really is necessary.[/FONT]

[Raiha]

[quote name='Sabrina'][FONT="Tahoma"]The more stunts corporations pull like that, the more they prove that stricter [b]legislation[/b] really is necessary.[/FONT][/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"]Yes. That's a good idea. Make a law.

Do not appoint an unelected person to a position of unprecedented executive power for an indeterminable length of time and give him the ability to determine such things when a law would do just fine. And have no personal, physical, human emotion fueled stake in any of these matters.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[SunfallE]

[FONT="Lucida Sans Unicode"][COLOR="RoyalBlue"]I'm sure this doesn't cover everything, but it does have a bit of information on past bailouts and what happened afterwards. [URL="http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts"][U]Bailout[/U][/URL] Also, the money isn't completely spent yet, unless this site is completely wrong here: [URL="http://bailout.propublica.org/"][U]Current Bailout[/U][/URL] there is about 450 billion that hasn't even been committed to something yet.

So though seeing companies like Bank of America engaging in wasteful spending is extremely annoying, the bailout is far from over and it's way too soon to say it failed. Don't get me wrong though, I do think some of them should have been allowed to fail. That usually is the penalty for bad business tactics after all.[/COLOR][/FONT]

[James]

[quote name='Raiha'][COLOR="DarkOrchid"][FONT="Times New Roman"] The fact that they've appointed such a position, which I will henceforth refer to as "Massuh" means that the original bailout money had no specific requirements for usage attached to it. [/FONT][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

[font=franklin gothic medium]Wait, what? The fact that they've now appointed someone to monitor the way Government funds are spent automatically means that there were no conditions on previous Government grants and loans?

I think you're drawing a long bow there.[/font]

[quote]Anyway, I find that I'm leaning more towards we should have just let them go bankrupt every time I read stuff on how they use tax money for parties and personal use of company jets.[/quote]

[font=franklin gothic medium]While I understand this feeling - and generally I agree with it - I think there's an important point to make here.

If companies like GM are simply allowed to fail, the executives and senior management aren't the ones who suffer - it's the thousands of workers at the bottom and their families.

Not to mention the fact that a company like GM doesn't fail in isolation. There are literally thousands of businesses of all sizes that rely on trade with GM (suppliers). If a company like GM totally collapses, it only sits at the center of a bigger problem - it draws thousands of companies (and by extension, their thousands of employees) into the void. This is true even if those suppliers are running [i]good[/i] businesses and not making stupid mistakes.

Having said all of that, I certainly don't agree with the general principle that Government is responsible for bailing out all private business. And, in fact, even if I were to support a bail out, it would be with very strict conditions and only in a minority of cases.

But part of the reason I mention those issues with GM is because a lot of people (in general) don't understand how the economy works. They think it's a simple matter of allowing a business to fail, without having any grasp of the broader economic implications.

So my feeling is that bailouts are generally not some wholesale thing where someone can say "all bailouts are bad" or "all bailouts are good". It depends entirely on the individual situation.

I mean, some people scoff at the idea of having a Government-appointed person to monitor executive remuneration, as if this is somehow indicative of Communism (or some other silly, ignorant argument).

However, I'm sure that those people who are in favor of Government efficiency want to ensure that if you're receiving tax payer's money... you [i]aren't[/i] just throwing it away on ridiculous bonuses or perks that have nothing to do with business restructuring.

I find it interesting that some people who are constantly in favor of spending control and restraint for Governments themselves won't apply that same restraint to a private enterprise when it is the recipient of public funds.

Anyway, a few tangents in there... but those are my general thoughts on what I've been reading about the recent bailouts.[/font]

[Nathan]

[FONT="Arial"][QUOTE=Allamorph][FONT=Arial]I don't have a problem with Communism . . . or rather, the principle.

The problem isn't the theory of them. Everything works in theory. And the Federal Government has assumed the debt of the masses before; it can still function in massive amounts of debt, so offering bailout money was a legitimate move.

I was opposed to the bailout not because it was bad in theory, but because it was impossible to keep uncorrupted in practice.

And, well....[/FONT][/QUOTE]Of course. It's society and the attempt to put it into practice that gets horribly messed up. However, that doesn't change my stance of not being opposed to it. SunfallE already linked to a site showing what has happened with bailouts in the past and it's also clear that this one is far from over.

When I say worst offenders should be strung out, I mean those people who see no problem with allowing the money to be used for personal jet use or to pay for elaborate parties. I gave the wrong impression with my earlier post.

I'm not saying let the entire company fail, I'm saying weed out those incompetent people who are still in the mindset of being irresponsible and thinking they are above accountability. [/FONT]

[Rachmaninoff]

[QUOTE=James][font=franklin gothic medium]While I understand this feeling - and generally I agree with it - I think there's an important point to make here.

If companies like GM are simply allowed to fail, the executives and senior management aren't the ones who suffer - it's the thousands of workers at the bottom and their families.[/font][/QUOTE]Oh I know James, and I'm not going to bother to reply to all of your post for the simple reason of, I agree. I'm just kind of feeling a little frustrated with it right now.

[Drizzt Do'urden]

See GM really isn't one of the problem children in this situation. Really the problem stemed from poor managment of mortage companies and banks since they control the money flow.

If they stop giving loans or make it impossible for most people to get them, then unless you're paying with cash GM and other auto companies aren't selling cars since the bulk of buyers rely on loans.

First slap around those who drew up plans for the (and I'm going to need a correct name on this) housing act that made it easier for those who couldn't afford homes to buy them anyways.

So the more and more money banks lose on these loans cause them to tighten up and then nobody can get a loan for a house. They jack up interest rates so nobody can keep their houses and the end result. Nobody can buy a car or house so we all live in little tin huts and drive dog pulled carts (since nobody can afford a horse) to work.

So I say the government needs to do let the larger mortage companies fall and make room for the little guys to show their stuff. Then of course put interest caps into affect.

[Aaryanna_Mom]

Regardless of the hype surrounding the mistakes being made in the bailout, it's a bit premature to be jumping in and thinking the bailout is a failure. Come back in say about a decade, then you can look back and see if it really helped or not. Contrary to popular belief (and by popular, I refer to where I live) bailouts have worked in the past.

I do agree that it's unfortunate that there are people involved who simply refuse to let go of the practices that helped shape the problem in the first place. I honestly think those people should be fired immediately.