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Showing posts with the label Bailouts

Mergers & Bailouts in American History

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As some of you know, I am very interested in the various occupy movements that, until recently, were going on all over the country. (Occupy Boston remains in place, as does, by the way, Occupy Harvard.) I sympathize with the general feeling of frustration, and I think it's worth trying to figure out how to express some of those sentiments in a more rigorous way.

Elizabeth Warren, who is currently running for Senate in Massachusetts, must be one of the smartest people in politics. I recently watched a clip of an interview she did with Charlie Rose in which she makes a very compelling argument that's worth thinking about in historical perspective.

Warren basically says that although she agrees the 2008/09 bailout of several large banks, AIG, as well as GM and Chrysler were necessary, it was not executed the right way. The question she poses is this: was the bailout designed to preserve particular institutions, or to preserve the US Economy? "What we did when we rescued these…