Werthless wrote:I don't think they destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth to ransom out billions of dollars of tax money.
Well, look at it this way, they have already gotten not billions, but $trillions from the fed to shore them up. Financial institutions, traders, investors, other speculators have $trillions at stake, which they are more interested in preserving than they are in rescuing the economy. They are fighting tooth and nail to prevent things like zeroing the common stock of the financial institutions, zeroing the preferred, and giving a close haircut to the bondholders and the holders of the other depressed paper. A lot of speculators have purchased the depressed paper, hoping for a killing on the government bailout. The $700 billion is just the tip of the iceberg in the taxpayer bailout. So, it is $trillions at stake here, and even if you have lost $ 1 trillion, you'd still rather salvage a few hundred $billion than nothing.
