[Kosh]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27877195


Failing upwards anyone?

[Nuclear1]

So, you'd allow Citigroup to collapse just to teach them a lesson?

[Kosh]

Yeah. All this will do is encourage more irresponsible lending later on down the road.

Their next board meeting will likely go something like this:

"We can't fail, so go throw all this money at anything you want. If you screw up, don't worry, the taxpayers will be more than happy to bail us out."

[Nuclear1]

So instead you'll punish the taxpayers by allowing one of the largest banking corporations in the country to go under and further cripple an already-sunk economy?  Thank God you hold no position of power.

Save the vengeance and finger-pointing for later--we need to fix this economy.  If it means bailing out the big corporations, fine--just ensure they're properly reprimanded afterwards.

[TrashMan]

A banking corporation going down? Worries me, the end of the world as we know it!

The thing with market is whenever a niche/spot gets opened, it will be filled up rather fast. Sure, the downfall of a bank is not a pretty thing, but it happened before a thousand times in a thousand countries.

[Shade]

Citigroup is not just any bank, though. Comparing them going down to the previous failure of some random bank is like comparing a light summer breeze to a hurricane. Letting it fall would have a very real and very bad effect on global economy.

That said, any bailout ought to be accompanied by the stripping of all economic assets over 20k from the bank's managers, leaving them to live like the people financing the bailout That would teach them a lesson.

[Flipside]

Well, I'll agree the Bank needs saving, but Kosh is still right, there cannot be allowed to be an assumption by the banks that they can screw up to the factor of n and taxpayers will bail them out.

So, yes, if the bank needs rescuing, rescue it, but there must be a price to pay, and it must be enough to let the finance sector know in no uncertain terms that they are still going to be held responsible for their actions, even if they are bailed out. As long as the bank think the rescue is about them, not about the people who have accounts with them, this will continue to be a problem.

[IPAndrews]

Failing businesses should fail. Capitalism is a sham. The free market is a sham.

[Flipside]

Capitalism is most certainly a sham, and one that's been perpetrated for decades without people realising it as such, and now we've got a ****/fan interface situation, it's being exposed for what it is.

The market itself has never been 'free', price fixing has been a solid part of inter-business relations for decades, there is no freedom really for these groups because, in order to function, they usually have to join some kind of organisation that represents the businesses as a whole, and when they do that, they are more or less pressured into meeting the requirements of other businesses as well as their own.

Back in the 80's, with the Home Computer boom etc, there was a certain degree of free marketing then, that's how companies like Sinclair and Amstrad managed to exist, but nowadays, they wouldn't survive using those techniques, the market would turn on them even if the consumers were happy.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

A banking corporation going down? Worries me, the end of the world as we know it!

The thing with market is whenever a niche/spot gets opened, it will be filled up rather fast. Sure, the downfall of a bank is not a pretty thing, but it happened before a thousand times in a thousand countries.

Fixed.

So, you'd allow Citigroup to collapse just to teach them a lesson?

Sounds quite similar to what happened to Lehman Brothers. Both corporations are over a century old, for one.

[Colonol Dekker]

I very nearly eneded up working for Lehmen bros back in 06/07, lucky for me i took a gamble on the other firms.


But no, i don't think you/we should foot the bill for the failings of the government/financial market.

Although, education (or lack of it) played its part leading up to this. I digress though.

[Charismatic]

Failing businesses should fail. Capitalism is a sham. The free market is a sham.

Seconded.

[Martinus]

As my brother works for the local branch I get to see it as more than a name, the fall of other, smaller banks left so many people unemployed.

I don't think that anyone in their board of directors will be so misguided to believe that they will get more than this one chance. All it takes is for the government to step in and demand the company is broken into smaller, more manageable and thus secure companies and they're stuffed.

[perihelion]

Well why the hell DON'T they get broken up into smaller more manageable business units?  Seriously?  They have failed their responsibilities on so many levels we are well beyond talk of "punishment" and "vengeance."  I just want a solid system to prevent this happening again, and leaving the same pigs in charge that helped bring this crisis about in the first place has "idiotic" written all over it!

[Martinus]

That would no doubt involve litigation which is a costly (read costly as lucrative -_-) business. Shareholders (those who didn't abandon ship) wouldn't have much of an option if citibank screwed up twice and the fallout in jobs, as I mentioned above is something the government would want to minimise for fear of being seen as the bad-guy.

The banking system crash was a great example of group mindset, everyone was doing it so citibank's bankers just went with it. How foreseeable the crash was is debatable but not intentionally killing a bank that might be savable would help to prop up the market which needs both quick fixes to reassure people and long-term fixes to ensure it's not likely to happen again.

[Aardwolf]

Hey cool Maeglamor got a color change.

Question: why should the government give money to a 'company' when the people with the most direct access to that money are not the ones who would suffer if it collapsed?

[Stormkeeper]

When a company collapses, you'll lose jobs. Those jobs are also holding up the economy, more so the Citigroup, which is large enough that the repercussions of its collapse will probably be extremely severe.

[MarkN]

Yes, but the people with access to the money given to citigroup are not the people who would lose their jobs and be in hardship if the group failed. Instead it is the executives who have the money stashed away to live very nicely if they lose their jobs.

[Stormkeeper]

Yes, but the people with access to the money given to citigroup are not the people who would lose their jobs and be in hardship if the group failed. Instead it is the executives who have the money stashed away to live very nicely if they lose their jobs.

That may be the case, but you can't expect any government to just sit by and refuse to bail out the group with so many jobs at stake.

[Kosh]

I don't think that anyone in their board of directors will be so misguided to believe that they will get more than this one chance.

They are "too big to fail", so the government will keep handing them money. Look at AIG, the situation there is even worse (they lost $25 billion last quarter), and yet they have gotten bailed out 4 times in just a few months.

All it takes is for the government to step in and demand the company is broken into smaller, more manageable and thus secure companies and they're stuffed.

This is the same government who, after finding Microsoft guilty of being a monopoly, reversed itself with the incoming president because of campaign contributions to his political campaign. Breaking up Citigroup (or AIG for that matter) is not going to happen. I do hope I'm wrong about this, but I doubt it.


EDIT: I just read that up to this point we've spent more inflation adjusted dollars on bail outs than we did on world war 2.