Hacker News Reader

Comment by comatose_kid | Hacker News Reader

That reflects popular sentiment, but it's not correct:

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/23/a-list-of-the-bigg...

Popular sentiment is correct in this case. No one went to jail for reckless behavior that they had good reason to believe was wrong. Instead, they got to keep their bonuses to buy their mansions.

Oh and in one final insult, the settlements with the banks will eventually be paid for out of bank revenues - which of course is generated by the public. I'm sure the bank execs are high fiving each other over that maneuver in the backyards of their private Connecticut uber-mansions.

> No one went to jail for reckless behavior that they had good reason to believe was wrong.

Unfortunately most of what the banks did that caused the 2008 crisis was not against the law.

Yes, see my previous comment. Bankers gave political contributions and laws were rewritten. And regulators were weakened.

IMHO the far larger injustice is that the federal treasury bailed them out. I'm OK with Goldman Sachs assholes living outside a prison; it's the taxpayer-funded luxury in which they live that really bugs me.

I only know about AIG, but the government bailed them out with a 14% interest rate with money they got from China at a 3% interest rate. The bail out was probably the most profitable thing the US government has ever done.

Why wasn't the rate 50%? Why not 70%? It's not as though anyone else was stumping the cash. (Here's a hint: despite "how it all turned out", this deal was extremely risky at the time. That's why no one else stepped up. I thought they liked "capitalism"; why didn't they see what the market would have borne?) Neither is it as though the bailout was in any sense beneficial to the economy, because now all traders have priced an even more enormous automatic "Uncle Sam's Insurance" policy into all future deals these reptiles put together.

AIG had to lump it or leave it, because they didn't own the last three Treasury secretaries. GS should have been in the same spot. That they weren't, is the epitome of self-dealing. Fuck that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com