Do you agree with the Decision to Bailout AIG?

[Perky]

Looking to prove an hypothesis.

[Perky]

1. need more votes

[TexasObserver]

2. How can anyone answer "we didn't have a choice"?

Of course we had a choice. The same choice that is made every time a private business is allowed to fail because it has made unsound business decisions.

AIG should not be saved. It should be liquidated in bankruptcy.

[1corona4u]

11. I don't like it, but I do agree that it would have had far reaching

effects if they would have not done it. Besides, it's a loan. I've heard 2 different versions, one saying they have 12 months to pay it back, and another saying it is 2 years. Regardless, I don't know how they intend to pay pack 85 billion in that short of time.

[TexasObserver]

12. In other words, you buy hook, line and sinker what Bush's appointees tell you.

AIG is a private company that made bad decisions. Do you think other insurance companies that didn't make such bad decisions should get similar loans, or are these loans just for those companies that have proved their incompetence?

AIG should be allowed to fail. This saving one company and letting another fail is wrong.

[1corona4u]

16. I make my own decisions, and Bush, nor his appointees ever influence me..

The fact is, had they not given them the LOAN it could have had a catastrophic effect on MILLIONS of people. Maybe even yourself. People who think they should have just let them sink really haven't thought it through.

I'm not going to argue my opinion on the matter, so consider this my last response to you.

[high density]

13. You tell that to the person who loses their life insurance payout

because you decided that AIG should not be bailed out.

I don't think anybody likes the idea of this, but letting them fail would be a lot worse.

[TexasObserver]

22. that's what the liquidation is for, to garner the assets to pay the insurance claims

Why would you keep in place the same incompetent company and management that created the disaster?

Why is a person's insurance to be protected when their cash in the bank over $100K is not?

So, do you believe that the government should bail out anyone whose business is going under?

[RichardRay]

29. If you think liquidation will pay all the claims of the people who

are currently insured by AIG then you've not been looking at the markets. The parts of AIG that still have value can't be liquidated and the parts that do have value can't be liquidated for anything like a useful amount of capital. Remember, an insurance company is not a bit piggy bank into which premiums are paid until they need to pay out a claim. AIG has nothing like the assets required to pay out its likely liabilities over the next several years, no insurance company does. Either they get back on their feet and develop a sound investment strategy, or a lot of folks who think they've got insurance coverage will get a nasty surprise.

Insurance used to be regulated so they couldn't get into this kind of trouble. There was even a bright line between banking functions to make 'retail' banking and 'investment' banking disjoint. In both cases stock holders got greedy and supported management that got higher rates of returns. How do you get a higher rate of return from the market? You accept more risk. Period. So the managers, the board members and the managing directors got their good buddies to de-regulate insurance and banking so they could accept more risk, and, guess what? It was risky! Stockholders, the boards and directors should go down hard, policy and account holders shouldn't.

[K Gardner]

18. Forbes Nat'l Editor now reporting on CNN: AIG Deal may NOT go through. He says

"some people think the buyout isn't big enough."

What balls, eh?

[WeDidIt]

19. We HAD NO CHOICE!

Deregulation allowed the AIG monster to have tentacles in EVERYTHING. Through derivative contracts, if AIG went bust, the entire banking and investment industry would go down the toilet with it. This would spark an economic calamity that would make the Great Depression seem like a head cold by comparison.

[tigereye]

28. they insured a lot of those subprime mortgage bundled loans, right?

I don't really know what they do, actually. My son was asking me this am about what insurers do, and I guess I don't really know what the function of AIG is. I always thought it was some kind of massive consulting firm...


apologies for my lack of financial jargon - I'm a mental health prof., and don't know much about business/ economics stuff per se.

[mokawanis]

3. Funny how the repugs call universal health care socialized medicine

but they're perfectly willing to bail out financial institutions.

[thoughtcrime1984]

4. The hypocrisy of the GOP knows no bounds. nt

[apnu]

6. The brokers at my company hate these bailouts

If anything its turning them off on Republicans.

[AllexxisF1]

5. What was the right thing to do.

The right thing to do was let AIG completely and utterly fail. We would have ended up in world wide depression, but at least something new would come from it.

The wrong thing to do was bail out AIG, which tell Wall Street that if anyone else is going to fall we have to bail them out too.

[TheCoxwain]

7. We Taxpayers might actually make a Profit on this one

I heard on NPR ... we ( govt) are getting a big stake .. have veto over major decisions .. so if it stabilizes, good pieces of the company will be sold off to repay the loan over the course of 2 years .. we should make a tidy profit.

[harun]

14. If there was any profit to be made in lending them this money the other

institutions would have been all over it.

[jsheriff]

21. Liquidity

It's a liquidity problem. Nobody has enough cash to pull this off except the feds.

[terrya]

8. Nevermind

[TheKentuckian]

9. No choice if you don't want a full scale crash

It's a horrible thing though, no question.

Socialized risk with private reward is a bunch of crap.

[eshfemme]

10. There was no choice because AIG was THE insurance company and they're worldwide.

Their crash would have triggered meltdowns in not just the US economy but in other global markets. When we're already hated for Iraq, we'd never be clear of our guilt for doing the work of our enemies by destroying capitalism as we know it through GOP incompetence. Even China and Russia wouldn't be happy because their capitalism lite is the only thing keeping their populace content and complacent.

And possibly, just as in WWII, a worldwide depression would foster the very environment that would aid in the rise of circumstances that would lead to a third world war. Only this time, it'd be with usable nukes, made possible by the Bush administration.

So yeah... not good.

I'm not thrilled about it because either way, things were gonna be bad and a bailout turned out to be choosing the lesser of two evils.

[bemildred]

15. Sure, why stop now?

I mean it's to late to prevent the crash, defending the currency is a joke at this point, why not stall until after the election?

[Hawkowl]

17. Means we all get Universal health insurance?

Since we just nationalized the insurance company, that means the government is in the insurance business right? Socialized medecine and disaster insurance!!! Seriously, we should insist on it.

[bemildred]

20. We can change the name to "People's Insurance Group", "PIG".

But seriously, that's a good idea, we can use it as the basis for the new single-payer tax-funded universal health care system that our good friends in Congress are finally going to give us.

[ellisonz]

24. Totally.

[Imagevision]

23. Without AIG forget your bucks in the bank being insured...

[olkaz]

25. wtf, it wasn't a bailout at all... IT'S A LOAN

The government is going to make a ton of money on selling off parts of AIG.

Seriously, get your facts straight.

[msallied]

26. I don't believe in bailing out the executives and CEOs who steered the ship into the rocks

But the customers who are going to lose everything don't deserve to suffer the same fate.

[Eurobabe]

27. b-but, I heard the US taxpayers own it now

WHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! :eyes:

[BooScout]

30. Why is this post in GDP? n/t

[ieoeja]

31. A short history on Liberal economics.

For 150 years our economy ran on a pure, Conservative hands-off model. This led to economic depressions every 12 to 15 years which everyone thought of as inevitable business cycles. When the Great Depression hit, the Conservatives in power did nothing because the government had never done anything before and nobody expected it to.

But things had changed. When most people were self-employed farmers with no debts, an economic depression just meant they couldn't buy as much stuff, but they still had all the essentials: housing and food. By the time of the Great Depression, too many people needed those jobs simply to afford housing and food.

Enter Liberal economics and the New Deal. Instead of sitting back and doing nothing, FDR started working to fix the economy. He also introduced a lot of rules and regulations that put an end to the cycle of economic depressions.

But three decades of Conservative economics, most of it with those rules and regulations unenforced, have brought us near to the breaking point again. So this poll would have been better worded as:

"Should we restore the New Deal and rescue AIG, et al?"

"Or should we sit back and enjoy the fall, ignoring the fact that the powers that be would just walk off with their golden parachutes letting their workers and firing off a chain-reaction of bankruptcies with similar results."


Helping AIG is a core value of Liberal economics.