“Actually GM and Chrysler bailouts were chickenfeed compared to the banks such as CitiCorp and Goldman and Wall St and AIG?”
Last I checked, AIG isn’t a bank, nor is “Wall St”. The Treasury made billions in profit on the investments in GS, MS, JPM, etc. There were big losses on the auto makers and AIG, though nothing compared with what has been flushed down the toilet with the ONGOING, INCREASING bailouts of Fannie/Freddie. “CitiCorp”? Off by a decade or two.
“the banks should have been knee capped, bankrupted and recapitalized by Govt. and then sold off and proceeds returned to taxpayers instead of going to banksters and their management”
That isn’t too far from what happened to AIG and Fannie/Freddie, minus the bankruptcy: massive stock dilution followed by pained attempts to recover the initial outlay.
To say that the government should have been “knee capp[ing]” any company or forcing it into bankruptcy, is not conservative as I understand the term.
I understand this is about the car makers. But at least maintaining the car makers allows the USA to produce something and they can be used to provide for the national security, which is much more than the financial companies do which tapped us out for trillions when the Federal Reserve handouts and no interest loans are included.
The banks, insurance companies, FRE and FNM all should have been held accountable. Ill gotten gains by their CEOs and others in the 2000s should have been clawed back. Why did the millions in bonuses that Franklin Raines got allowed to stand as well as Goldman , etc? Shareholders should have been wiped out too because there was no value and companies were not viable. Instead taxpayers bailed them out, their assets were purchased by the Fed, and the dollar declined.