David Trott- Another GOP minion who got rich taking advantage of people.

[compn]

instead of bailing out the banks, why didnt we just bail out everyone underwater on the mortgages?

the banks would have been fine either way. our taxes would have been used for it either way.

so which one would you vote for out of the two choices?
bank bailout or underwater mortage [[aka your neighbors and friends and family) bailout ?

[bailey]

instead of bailing out the banks, why didnt we just bail out everyone underwater on the mortgages?

the banks would have been fine either way. our taxes would have been used for it either way.

so which one would you vote for out of the two choices?
bank bailout or underwater mortage [[aka your neighbors and friends and family) bailout ?

How about neither?

[Jimaz]

instead of bailing out the banks, why didnt we just bail out everyone underwater on the mortgages?

the banks would have been fine either way. our taxes would have been used for it either way.

so which one would you vote for out of the two choices?
bank bailout or underwater mortage [[aka your neighbors and friends and family) bailout ?

That's a very good point. I just happened to run across this related article today: Did Washington Rescue the Wrong Economy? [[That server seems to be flaky today so I'll include a quote and some links.)

... Using data and arguments from their upcoming book “House of Debt,” Mian and Sufi essentially argue that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s recent public statements got the bailout exactly backwards. Geithner has argued that rescuing homeowners who were left underwater after the 2008 financial crisis wasn’t worth the effort, and that rescuing the banking system was our most urgent priority.

... After exhaustive research, Sufi and Mian have concluded that long-term economic damage was not an inevitable outcome of the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, it’s the result of a bailout plan that focused on the wrong segments of the economy.

Specifically, Sufi and Mian believe that the 2009 crisis wouldn’t have been any more harmful than other recessions of recent decades if financial decision-makers had rescued homeowners, rather than only concentrating on bankers. Financial institutions needed to be rescued, but they conclude that aid to homeowners – specifically, mortgage write-downs – were needed to get the economy back on track.

This argument is closely tied to the idea that we now have two economies. One is for the financial sector, an expanding category which is disconnected from job-producing ventures [[and whose rapid-payback, profit-churning mentality is increasingly dominating the management of other industries). The other is the “real world” economy – the one in which people do real work in order to produce real goods and services, and then use their income to purchase those goods and services....

That article links to these:

• The Case Against the Bernanke-Obama Financial Rescue
• Why Tim Geithner is wrong on homeowner debt relief

[Wesley Mouch]

Bernanke, Obama, Geitner did save the financial system from collapse. We won't ever know what would have happened if they had followed another course. I've heard the case against BOG. And just heard Geitner on Charlie Rose the other day. He makes a pretty compelling case that as repugnant as it was, it was better than the systemic collapse we almost experienced.

If you want to try that systemic collapse, elect the 'I'm not running' Elizabeth Warren as President. You might get to see how her anti-bank populist rhetoric works in real life.