Debate: Should taxpayer dollars be used to bail out a private company?
Side: No

I guess you just learned a lesson about watching CNN :P OK, now that i have that out of my system lolThis first point is not meant to excuse CEOs but what do you expect them to do? If they come out and say on TV that they are going out of business in three days, they will be sued by their shareholders for driving the company under. Maybe 30,000 employees kept their jobs for an extra month because of that lie. I am not excusing the lie if it is determined to be fraud, but I also know I wouldn't do any different, except maybe refuse interviews which also would hurt stockholders. I believe you are specifically talking about the Lehman situation. It is being investigated and if fraud was involved, someone will go to jail I am sure. But there was really no winning hand he could play. And that is assuming he wasn't as good as Bill Clinton at parsing his words and using careful sophistry to say what we wanted to hear without actually, technically lying.ANY loan can be defaulted on. My point was that there was an appropriate place to make these loans. Not because I am responsible. But because of my unique situation. It is not the loan program that is to blame. The problem is that if they make this loan available to me, how do they bar it from everyone else? Per Congressional mandate, they cannot deny someone because of underwriting as congress has mandated sub prime loans. So why won't anyone just blame the greed of MAIN Street! Greed does not only live on Wall Street. But they were mandated by Congress, not by bankers. I would be SHOCKED if any banker came up with a way to make bad loans in the absence of congressional mandate. That had to be foisted on them by Congress. Once Congress mandated sub prime and manipulated to make the risk disappear for originators by having FanFred buy up that paper without being discounted for the risk, who in their right mind is going to resist making money? It wasn't the banks who didn't think of the ramifications. It was Congress. They demanded that lenders make bad loans and then removed the risk for doing so. It is as simple as that. What you are understandably mad at lenders for doing was FORCED on them by Congress. I never said that no one should be held responsible. I merely asked who posters thought should pay the price. If Frank, Shimmer, DOD, Waters don't go to jail, then no, I don't think bank presidents should go to jail.Banks aren't supposed to take on risk? lol how do they make money without taking on risk? There is an answer to that question, they get out of banking and raise fees. They suck you into a dependence on ATMs which lower their labor costs and then they systematically raise fees on ATM usage. They increase fees which is a much more predictable source of income than actual banking. So is that your idea of what banks should be? If they aren't supposed to take on risk, that is the model you are apparently in favor of. Banks are businesses. They depend on income. You say they cannot take risk so that means they can't make loans or engage in actual banking so instead they just nickel and dime us with fees. And your risk position is moot since as soon as Congress instructed FanFred to buy the paper, it removed the risk from the banks. So it was REGULATION, not DE REGULATION that caused this problem. It was Congressional mandate that removed the risk from the banks and mandated the making of sub prime loans. I guess I am responsible. I currently have no job, am paying three mortgages and am struggling with how to make enough income to maintain my standard of living, how to keep investing for retirement at my current level and how to hide money where Barack Obama cannot find it, take it from me and give it to some homeless guy or family making 60K. I cannot get health insurance so I am stuck paying almost $1100 a month on a crazy plan that is my only option that actually covers anything. I have great net worth and no income and in a credit crunch it sucks to be me because it is hard to monetize my net worth and the price is down on everything so none of my assets can be sold for a price that makes sense. I have done the right things in paying cash for cars, paying down debt, paying large down payments, keeping no credit card debt and where has it gotten me? Six months ago, my banks wanted to loan me money with no money down but now they are shutting down my HELOC. I am no better or worse a credit risk than I was before. I haven't defaulted on any payments.