Quote from Landis82:
You are mistaken.
JPM "back-stopping" Bear did do something. The fact of the matter is that there were counter-parties to Bear that were made whole. You keep forgetting that there are "others" on the other side of all of these mortgage transactions. These transactions are not transferable.
But given your logic, it would be "protecting crap" if we were to make sure that counter-parties were made whole. Do you even have any idea of the magnitude of how many counter-parties are out there to these transactions?
Basically you're saying if counterparties who CHOOSE to take on the risk of doing business with an entity overexposed to the mortgage market face losing money, those counterparties should be protected at the expense of the taxpayer because having financial firms that don't conduct proper due diligence in choosing whom to take on credit risk with are "necessary for the functioning of the economy." Get real. The IBs are all a scam, the fact that they've gotten so deeply entangled into our economy that they can cause it slow down when they fuck up shows just how little we need them and how they are a leech on society. I can't imagine how you make any money trading if you not only can't see through basic Wall Street propaganda but you go around perpetuating it.