71–80 of 99 posts
Maybe I just find it hard to think its anything other than greed when the company involved is an organised scam... er insurance company. ;)
This really makes my blood boil, but I'm trying to remain impartial while reading. The highlight of the article: > Judge Paul A. Engelmayer wrote that while Starr’s complaint “paints a portrait of government treachery worthy of an Oliver Stone movie,” the company “voluntarily accepted the hard terms offered by the one and only rescuer that stood between it and imminent bankruptcy.” Sure, the terms might have seemed "…
I agree with the emotion but I can also see the argument that the agreement was made under duress. If you are about to die and the only person who could save you, offers to do so, but asks you to agree to something reprehensible in exchange for saving you, what do you do? At the risk of creating a strawman (the goal is illustration not substitution) let us construct a scenario, you're hanging by a rope which is break…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused about the analogy - who did AIG shareholders con?
This is standard operating procedure on the internet: everyone who wears a suit is a parasitcal criminal. Back in reality, most banks have paid back their TARP funds, as did AIG, generating a hefty return over 3 years to the Treasury. You know what bailout is still significantly in the red? The auto industry. But we hear little about that because those guys don't work on Wall Street.
In all fairness, I do not remember "the auto industry" almost bringing the whole capitalistic system (and with it our Western world) close to a grinding halt, according to what we were lead to believe, in the last 5 to 10 years. And after the gang-rape that GM did over here in Germany and continues to do now, oh yes you do hear about them here.
> a suit is a parasitcal criminal.
From what I have seen, the average folks still buy into the opposite extreme where every suit and especially every banker is some sort of god-like being, far removed from our mere mortal realm and surely a gravely respectable person, much more so than the average Joe. Quite frankly, I find the extreme prevalent on the internet to be far more beneficial because it moves things into a direction where the strange money-fetish has to make way for a more realistic view of this profession so prone to scams, frauds, "gamblings", cut-necks and other shenanigans. It will hopefully help people to view a bank not much different from some regular store, a place offering a service, regardless of dress code.
Also, I do not think the auto industry runs Stasi-like intelligence operations where they constantly collect and pool your most private and financial information and credit ratings and use all that to evaluate how they are going to deal with and sell to you - or potentially put you out on the street.
As someone unfortunate enough to be working in IT in this "parasitic" industry I cannot see this industry getting hit and dis-credited hard enough after they have repeatedly gotten away with much more than murder over decades. There is no reason other than money that anyone works in this and it cannot be a coincident that they pay much more than a lot of other industries; and I don't think there are a lot of other industries with a more backward, pre-history corporate and work culture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused about the analogy - who did AIG shareholders con?
This is standard operating procedure on the internet: everyone who wears a suit is a parasitcal criminal. Back in reality, most banks have paid back their TARP funds, as did AIG, generating a hefty return over 3 years to the Treasury. You know what bailout is still significantly in the red? The auto industry. But we hear little about that because those guys don't work on Wall Street.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that bankruptcy (particularly corporate bankruptcy) is hardly as permanent as death. And no-one making decisions at AIG was personally on the hook for remotely that level of responsibility. Conflating their position with calamitous death seems borderline disingenuous. You're soliciting emotional reactions to an unforeseeable emergency. But AIG was in a situation that years of rational business decisions put in…
If you review the situation with AIG, the only available bankruptcy option available to AIG was Chapter 7, aka liquidation. There was no scenario without the government stepping in that they could have used Chapter 11 to re-organize. In this case, a corporate liquidation is exactly like death, the assets are divided up amongst the creditors and the company ceases to exist.
The very fact that the government even stepped in is a major exception to the system as a whole, so this is more like the flying spaghetti monster sending you back to earth after your suicide and you then wanting to sue His Noodly Appendage for not having been able to play the lottery on the day of your death and/or not picking up Charon's ferry bill for you.
And there is no law against offering a tough deal when the odds are stacked for you and your partner has their back against the wall - a principle the banks and insurances use and (strongly) abuse each and every day against those who have no choice. Again, had this been some even-bigger-money-giant buying AIG out and then running the place into the ground again, it would have also been the end of it.
They are twisting a rule that was obviously meant to keep capitalism and business separate from government just to get some money out of it when without that governmental divine intervention they would not even be existent in the first place.
I am all for playing devil's advocate and looking at the flip-side of things and great you made an attempt but, sorry, this is wrong on so many levels, there is no right way of looking at it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is standard operating procedure on the internet: everyone who wears a suit is a parasitcal criminal. Back in reality, most banks have paid back their TARP funds, as did AIG, generating a hefty return over 3 years to the Treasury. You know what bailout is still significantly in the red? The auto industry. But we hear little about that because those guys don't work on Wall Street.
> The auto industry In all fairness, I do not remember "the auto industry" almost bringing the whole capitalistic system (and with it our Western world) close to a grinding halt, according to what we were lead to believe, in the last 5 to 10 years. And after the gang-rape that GM did over here in Germany and continues to do now, oh yes you do hear about them here. > a suit is a parasitcal criminal. From what I have s…
I don't care about "could haves". These industries were all bailed out; some returned a profit to the taxpayers, some are still in the red without a chance of paying any of it back. Yet we continuously denigrate the industry that paid the money back as the "criminals".
>"From what I have seen, the average folks still buy into the opposite extreme"
Really? You must be living in a different world than I am. Just skim this thread, or any thread on Reddit...
>"Also, I do not think the auto industry runs Stasi-like intelligence operations where they constantly collect and pool your most private and financial information and credit ratings and use all that to evaluate how they are going to deal with and sell to you - or potentially put you out on the street."
Banks aren't planning to put you on the street. Where does this come from? Banks want to lend money and be paid back, with interest. This whole debacle worked out really well for them. They only had something like 3 trillion wiped from their collective balance sheets.
By the way, the auto-industry parents run huge financial companies.
>"it cannot be a coincident that they pay much more than a lot of other industries"
Sort of like IT? Or medicine?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is standard operating procedure on the internet: everyone who wears a suit is a parasitcal criminal. Back in reality, most banks have paid back their TARP funds, as did AIG, generating a hefty return over 3 years to the Treasury. You know what bailout is still significantly in the red? The auto industry. But we hear little about that because those guys don't work on Wall Street.
I seem to remember a number of them didn't need to take the funds, but were arm-twisted into it so that it would look like a general national problem as opposed to bailing out some well-connected (yet incompetent) cronies.
The industry needed an infusion of cash, and they spread it around a bunch of the biggest players.
From the article: "It contends that the onerous nature of the rescue — the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal’s high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer’s Wall Street clients — deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for “public use, without just compensation.” From a di…
Just because AIG ended up being some half-lucky and double-dumb middleman does not give them any legitimacy for such claims what-so-ever. They are nothing but lucky to still be there and the whole governmental stepping-in is not even a natural part of the system, while bankruptcy very, very much is.
Any corporation too big to fall should be too big to exist. No company should be allowed to hold hostage our entire financial system.
That makes for a nice sound bite but how do you decide it? I'm not even opposed to the idea (I'm overwhelmingly in favor, actually) but what mechanism is used to establish "too big to fail?" I realize that we can't legislate on the basis of "unforeseen consequences," but legislation by bumper sticker slogan is just as bad.
Obviously SOME sort of mechanism was used when the decision was made FOR the bail-outs. How about you very simply start there? You can always improve later.
Any corporation too big to fall should be too big to exist. No company should be allowed to hold hostage our entire financial system.
That makes for a nice sound bite but how do you decide it? I'm not even opposed to the idea (I'm overwhelmingly in favor, actually) but what mechanism is used to establish "too big to fail?" I realize that we can't legislate on the basis of "unforeseen consequences," but legislation by bumper sticker slogan is just as bad.