Are bailouts of major corperations by the federal government justified?

What’s a corperation?

^^smartass

ha ha. Corporation, oops. Word has destroyed my spelling.

@peyton_farquhar: If you don’t like smartasses, you’re in the wrong place.

It’s a debate question for school and I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on it or interesting perspectives I need to consider. That’s all :D

[mod says:] Alright, let’s have some serious answers now. Thanks.

The bailouts aren’t justified in my eyes because they are taking the easy way out and getting their butts saved by the government. They should have had the fiscal responsibility and good judgement in the first place to not let themselves get to a point where they had to rely on the Feds for assistance.

If they go under due to their own incompetence, too bad. I would like to know what happens when the government runs out of money trying to save all of these corporations and banks and whatever else around the country.

As a capitalist, no!
It’s the survival of the fitist/smartest. Reward should be bestowed by markets. If they screwed up “fuck em” let them fail let the smart conservative managers who invested wisely, honoured their feduciary responsibilities deserve to survive and grow big! Instead bail out the average citizen, reduce their tax burden, reduce their mortgage rates, give them monies to make sure they can keep paying their mortages= no defaults= monies into smart banks= Smart Gov helping citizens and not Corp Leeches!!!!
( sorry for SP, and rambiling)

I would prefer that companies that are in trouble because they have been managed irresponsibly (which is the case for much of this situation) were not bailed out.

The other side of this equation is that the current fiscal crisis is approaching unprecedented proportions. Our leaders believe that if all of the companies are allowed to fail, the ripple effect in terms of unemployment, lost homes, etc., will devastate this country’s people and eventually the world.

What is needed is tight oversight, limited bailouts (loans are better), and conditional money that requires the recipient firms to use it to stimulate the economy.

Note: This is all over the Web. You can do some of your own research to find reputable sites that can give you a good grounding in the situation. That would be a good idea.

I guess I’d be more apt to answer if this topic hadn’t already been beaten to death.
Great answers here and here.

I don’t understand why people think bankruptcy will cause a huge loss of jobs. It seems to me that companies with cash will buy these companies at firesale prices and keep the employment, and probably improve management immensely.

Wachovia got bought up by Wells-Fargo at an incredibly low price (thank god we sold our Wachovia stock last summer—our only lucky financial move). Anyway, they haven’t laid anyone off yet, because they don’t even know the company. Layoffs may occur in the summer, if they find redundancies in the combined organization. Of course, those redundancies could just as easily be in the Wells-Fargo part as the Wachovia part.

My point is that I don’t know how many jobs will be lost, but it might not be that significant compared to what we’re seeing in the industrial sector. Speaking of that, if, say Toyota bought up GM, who’s to say they might not have kept all the workers, maybe at lower wages, and tried to rehabilitate the product line.

Fact from fiction, truth from diction. I am with Bagardbilla, if a business ain’t strong enough to survive whatever, then they should fail. Also it would be a hupocrisy in my book to save a business just because it is very large or its services widely used. The businessmen are the back bone of America, if anyone needs help or a lifeline it would be them. As a whole the sole proprietors create more jobs. I don’t think there is no business that is too big too fail. I do believe there is no business too small to help though.