Quote Originally Posted by VanChilds View Post
So why the hell didn't we just do this from the start and not spend 700 billion and counting
Because America is a corporate socialist economy. Since this crisis started the welfare of the banks' shareholders and bondholders has been the main priority of both the Bush and Obama admins.

Today's AIG bailout is part of that too. AIG insured hundreds of billions of mortgage securities from default, now they've all defaulted and so AIG has to pay out on them and they don't have any cash left so the government has to pay. If the govt. doesn't pay then the firms that AIG insured will go bust, notably US investment banks and French/German commercial banks. They should stop pretending and nationalise everything already, they're already backstopping the whole system. Yet they keep on bailing these balck holes out.