So now the Bush administration proposes to make the federal guarantee explicit and even to offer taxpayer money to help recapitalize the two banks if needed. Everything has been nationalized -- except the profits and the pay scales of the bank's executives.
That's right. If the guarantees work, private speculators, having driven the stock down, will clean up on the upside. And the bank's CEO's will continue to pocket the multi-million dollar salaries that are de rigueur on Wall Street. Call it Wall Street socialism. Their losses are socialized; their profits are pocketed. You and I will pay for their failures. And if conservatives have their way, their families will pocket their successes, without even having to pay a tax for the transfer of the estates we've helped to create.
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Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are private companies.
The way capitalism is supposed to work is that a company takes a risk, and if they succeed in overcoming that risk, they make a profit. If not, they go down and eat their losses.
Now Juniorbush and his cronies are not real capitalist: they only play them on teevee, because here they expect us, the taxpayers, to take the hit and guarantee these clowns their profit, no doubt also allowing their execs to continue reaping their high salaries which I suggets they do not deserve, being as their poor choices lost money for their companies.
I don;t know what Obama would do, but it seems idiotic to bail these guys out. At the very least, the government should take them over, perhaps just for a brief reorganization period, and then throw the rascals out. Anyone who bought stock starting today should not get more than his money back and a slap on the wrist.