Quote from pspr:
I didn't know the FED could make loans to non-bank corporations. It doesn't seem right to bail out some but not others.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870.html
I don't think anyone would argue with you. But what I always come back to is that sometimes in extreme situations you have to accept a necessary evil. Is it fair to bail out some and not others? No. But wouldn't you consider bailing out the big boys if you thought their failure would bring the country down? of course. The question that is hard to answer is whether these entities were 'too big to fail'. For the most part, it's not hard for me to believe a lot of these were too big to fail. Here's what struck me from the article:
"Fed officials emphasize that their actions were meant to stabilize a financial system that was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. They note that the actions worked to prevent a complete financial meltdown and that none of the special lending programs has lost money. (Some have recorded healthy profits for taxpayers.) "
""It is hard to say what would have happened without the facility, and how its absence might have affected GE, but overall the program was extremely effective in helping stabilize the market," GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson said by e-mail.
Verizon spokesman Robert A. Varettoni said that it was "an extraordinary time," adding that there was no credit available otherwise at the time. "
"The disclosure shows "how really profound the financial crisis was in the fall of 2008 and the firepower the Fed mustered in response," said analyst Karen Shaw Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics. "
"Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher defended the Fed's actions during the financial crisis, saying the central bank "stepped into the breach" in its role as a lender of last resort.
Click here!
"That's what we are paid to do," he said. "We took an enormous amount of risk with the people's money," he acknowledged. But the crisis lending programs are now all closed, he said, "and we didn't lose a dime, and in fact we made money on every one of them." "
-who am I to say all these people are full of shit, and that the whole thing was a big sham pulled on the American People? I'm willing to entertain that maybe something better could have been done, but I do think they did about the best they could in a true crisis.