Should the banks that were bailed out be punished? The Top Execs? Tea Party opinion

[Wei Wu Wei]

I believe most people, myself included and the Tea Party (very vocally), were unhappy about the bank bailouts.

Is the Tea Party pushing for some sort of punishment on the banks and/or their top executives? How about anything to try to right the wrong of the government bailing them out with no strings attached?

[Tecate]

I wish I had time to go off on a rant, but instead I'll just leave you with this...

The bankster bailout (bankster takeover) was the biggest scam in history. A bunch of globalist Bernie Madoff's.

Bloomberg: Maybe A Secret Banking Cabal Does Run The World After All

[Speedy]

Right after Barney Fag..er... Frank, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are punished, sure. But not until that condition is met. Fag and Todd must be punished before any exec or anyone else is punished and no one can recieve a harsger punishment than those two.

[Tecate]

Calling it a bailout is actually being nice considering the facts. It was more like a stick-up where you get to pay the robber interest on the money he stole from you.

Oh, and the banker bailout wasn't $750 billion, it was $28.7 trillion (total taxpayer exposure) most recently reported. It's probably well over $30 trillion by now and grows at a rate of about $2 trillion per month. Bloomberg seems to be the only news outlet that's reporting on this honestly.

AIG was used as the federal reserve's holding company to funnel tens of billions to off-shore foreign central banks... DERIVATIVES... Bernanke won't say where at least $2.5 trillion went... DERIVATIVES... Government backed pension funds are being asked nicely to prop up insolvent failed banks... DERIVATIVES...

I could go on and on.

[Wei Wu Wei]

Calling it a bailout is actually being nice considering the facts. It was more like a stick-up where you get to pay the robber interest on the money he stole from you.

Oh, and the banker bailout wasn't $750 billion, it was $28.7 trillion (total taxpayer exposure) most recently reported. It's probably well over $30 trillion by now and grows at a rate of about $2 trillion per month. Bloomberg seems to be the only news outlet that's reporting on this honestly.

AIG was used as the federal reserve's holding company to funnel tens of billions to off-shore foreign central banks... DERIVATIVES... Bernanke won't say where at least $2.5 trillion went... DERIVATIVES... Government backed pension funds are being asked nicely to prop up insolvent failed banks... DERIVATIVES...

I could go on and on.

Go back to the your Soviet Motherland you Capitalism hating traitor.

[Tecate]

Go back to the your Soviet Motherland you Capitalism hating traitor.

Ah, yes. Our grandchildren will be quite thankful for what is being passed off today as "capitalism". They'll be paying for it for many decades to come. The gift that keeps on taking if you will.

I'm assuming of course that you are being snarky and sarcastic since I don't really know you.

[FlaGator]

What about the banks that have paid back their "bailout" money?

[Gingersnap]

In my mind, it's more important to fix the regulatory issues and policy initiatives that opened up this can of worms. While there have always been a few banks willing to take on huge risks, the free-for-all we saw over the past 20 years is an unintended consequence of government intrusion into lending practices.

The idea that home ownership is some kind of stand-alone virtue is ludicrous. All the qualities that made home ownership virtuous in the past were tied to specific behaviors: steady employment, thrift, delayed-gratification, and fiscal prudence. Those were the virtues, home ownership was the by-product.

We need to unravel the social engineering imposed by the government first.

[Apache]

Go back to the your Soviet Motherland you Capitalism hating traitor.

Knock it off, you Marxist twit! You have NO room to be calling anyone a commie

[Tecate]

In my mind, it's more important to fix the regulatory issues and policy initiatives that opened up this can of worms. While there have always been a few banks willing to take on huge risks, the free-for-all we saw over the past 20 years is an unintended consequence of government intrusion into lending practices.

The idea that home ownership is some kind of stand-alone virtue is ludicrous. All the qualities that made home ownership virtuous in the past were tied to specific behaviors: steady employment, thrift, delayed-gratification, and fiscal prudence. Those were the virtues, home ownership was the by-product.

We need to unravel the social engineering imposed by the government first.

Repealing the Glass-Stegal Act also played a huge role in creating this ridiculously large bubble of toxic, worthless paper assets. It makes the savings and loan debacle back in the 80's look like a kid's game in comparison.