Plain buying a company's shares gives no money to the company, just to its shareholders Buying new shares from the company in exchange for bailout money dilute

Plain buying a company's shares gives no money to the company, just to its shareholders Buying new shares from the company in exchange for bailout money dilutes the value of existing shares (not necessarily a bad thing, the investors bet on a company that wasn't prepared for such a downturn). Of course companies that have done stock buybacks could sell stock on the open market with roughly the same effect. Buying debt from a company likely means future dividends will be lower, share prices are also likely to go down. Plain bailing out a company with no payback is essentially an investment in jobs and a healthy economy, I can't see any reason why at the very least it shouldn't be exchanged for equity. Of course in all these cases it's all of us who are doing this collectively (very socialist!) we should expect that companies that are bailed out by the taxpayers repay their bailouts eventually, from that point of view investing in companies that don't pay their fair share of taxes (by playing accounting games, moving profits offshore etc) are particularly poor investments