Saying the bailouts were paid back is like that joke about the captain was sober today (which you should read if you don’t know it cause it is funny). It is technically true but it highly misleading.
The bailouts were paid back but the excessive reserve funding was not. The reserve funding was multiple times the size of the bailouts
There was an inflationary spike during the time so even with interest the amount paid back bought less.
Due to stressing testing the entire midsize banking sector was shutdown by the US government. Effectively eliminating the competition for Goldman and other receivers. The stress testing also allowed AIG to not pay out. The last point is important. AIG was supposed to be insurance and the government allowed them to not do the one thing insurance is supposed to do. Even today there are less banking companies in the US compared to 2007 and the population has gone up by about 30 million. A 10% increase of customers in a market that has much less competition
The bailout of GM and the airlines gets buddled in with the Banking bailout. GM of course never paid back the 45 billion dollar stock swap but did pay back the small loan. The airlines didn’t even do that much. As part of the GM bailout they were able to get sweet deals like not having to deal with lawsuits from problems with Saturns for example, despite federal requirements.
The banks took advantage of the destroyed competition by the US government. That’s why if you had an account during those years chances are it was sold to one of the big players. Did you get the free checking and overdraft protection carried over? No of course not. In violation of established law the banking regulators allowed sold accounts to be treated like new accounts.
The banks totally misrepresented their situation. Yeah yeah Barnes. I don’t care. The last year of operation the CEO received 750 million dollars in bonuses alone. This does not even come close to what he received by other means and what the C suite got as a whole. Bankruptcy for a bank is not the same as real bankruptcy. Me or you we go bankrupt we eat ramen for the next 5 years. Corporate bankruptcy is “I think I could shutdown shop and make more money that way instead of continuing”. There was zero danger of you going to your bank account and they couldn’t give you your money. FDIC stood ready to inject 100s of billions in cold hard cash. If any of the big banks suddenly went over it would have sucked for the average person for a single weekend. Most of the toxic assets has already been moved on to pension funds anyhow.
TL:DR imagine I gave you Delaware and 5 dollars, you paid me back 6 dollars and never shut the fuck up about how you paid your debt.
Saying the bailouts were paid back is like that joke about the captain was sober today (which you should read if you don’t know it cause it is funny). It is technically true but it highly misleading.
TL:DR imagine I gave you Delaware and 5 dollars, you paid me back 6 dollars and never shut the fuck up about how you paid your debt.