3 ms·
Government says we can't spend money to help the homeless, or the poor, or the sick. The budget is tight and we can't afford it. But when it comes to bailing ou
by bjourne 7y ago
Government says we can't spend money to help the homeless, or the poor, or the sick. The budget is tight and we can't afford it. But when it comes to bailing out banks, there is endless supply of money coming their way. It's strange how that works.
- ben_jones 7y agoMy naive understanding is that governments profit from these bailouts. From this article: > The final cost of the bank bailouts has still to be determined and there are a number of factors at play. Nama is projecting to return a surplus of €4 billion to the exchequer but that could go either way and we still don’t have a firm and fast date for its winding up. The US did at least [1]. [1]: https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/financial-crisis-bailouts-have-earned-taxpayers-billions https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2017-01-19/finan...
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoI'm not sure how it worked in Ireland. But when we bailed the banks out in the US, it was through a loan that they paid back in a year. Lending someone IMAGINARY money to avoid, potentially, the next Great Depression doesn't really seem like a bad decision, to me. Giving REAL money to the homeless is much more controversial. I'm not saying I oppose it. It's just this notion of one or the other -- at least from how things went down in the states -- doesn't really make sense. It was apples to oranges.