Quote Originally Posted by VeeDubb65 View Post
The only conclusion I can come to from this statement, is that you didn't read most of my last post.

My whole point, one more time with feeling, is NOT that we would have been just fine if we let all the major financial institutions fail. My point is that the ones that would have failed without the bailout, are not going to be saved by the bailout, and therefore, we would have been better off without a billion dollars of extra national debt.
I did read your post....I just think the bailout did a lot more than you are giving it credit for. You can't say a bank that is on the brink of failure because it's $40 billion in the red and can't pay it's creditors, is STILL going to fail if it receives $50 or $60 billion in federal assistance and thus CAN pay it's creditors, and get back on it's feet.

Now maybe in the LONG RUN, they still make poor decisions or employ bad business strategies, which I why Obama is asking for increased oversight, new management in some (extreme) cases, and re-instating regulations so this cannot happen again.....of course he's being labelled a socialist for this.....maybe rightly so....but it needs to be done right now....this is a terrible mess that he has to clean up, and he's getting dirty in the process

BTW, we're talking a total price tag of several TRILLION dollars, not billions.....here's a breakdown of where all the bailout funds have gone (again, the Bush bailout was terribly managed and nobody is really sure where some of that money went or how it was used)

Follow the money: Bailout tracker - CNNMoney.com

you can also see which banks, sepcifically were helped....most of these institutions are still in business or were sold off (with federal support) to other banks....they would have collapsed without the bailouts (and probably bought down a lot of other institutions with them)