Has anyone ever uttered a more obscene phrase than "Too big to fail"?

[Atticus]

Think about it.

What is really being said?

What is meant by "big"?

M-o-n-e-y.

Companies, banks, conglomerates---if they have or control lots of money---i.e., billions and trillions---they will not be allowed to fail because the very, very wealthy people who own and control them and the other businesses with which they deal would lose BIG MONEY if they did.

And, it really doesn't matter WHY a business is about to fail. If it was simply unlucky or foolish or greedy or criminal---it doesn't matter. There is big money---big money belonging to important people---at stake, so something will be done to "save the day".

But, factory workers can fail. Job moved off shore, unemployment ran out, no insurance, no savings, mortage being foreclosed---tough shit!

Mom and Pop restaurants can fail. Costs increasing for everything, fewer customers who order cheaper items, working 70 hours a week because half the employees have been layed off, no insurance, months behind on rent or mortgage---hey, it's just "the wisdom of the marketplace" telling you you're a bad business person.

Truth is, if your success isn't vital to continuing the lifestyle of people who own mulitiple homes in several countries and yachts that sleep several dozen, you will simply be viewed as "road kill" if you lose your job or your home or file bankruptcy.

It's "OK" if we fail. It happens to people like us everyday.

You may not believe this, but there used to be labor unions to protect ordinary working people and politicians who listened to them.
And, if a company started to get bigger than was in the best interest of the nation and its citizens, it was forced---by the government---to divide sell off part of its operations.

And, the only things "too big to fail" were America and the dreams of its people.

[Fuzz]

1. I think Bill Hicks has.

:)

[lpbk2713]

2. "Mission Accomplished" rates pretty high up there.

[Richard Steele]

3. "You know, the human rectum is almost nightmarishly elastic..."

That was the intro line for a comedy routine
involving 3 Rubix Cubes and a heroin-crazed Rodney Allen Rippey....

And that entire routine was not one MILLIONTH as obscene
as the blasphemously ghastly, un-American & anti-Capitalistic
FASCIST HORROR expressed in the four words "Too big to fail".

[Foo Fighter]

4. Yes, there is a phrase more obscene than "Too big to fail."

And that phrase is "We need to bail out these institutions that are too big to fail."

Of course by "we" they mean "all you poor and working class bastards that aren't too big to fail." After all, we're just here to serve the needs of the rich. That's our lot in life. Just accept it.

If a "little person" fails, that's their own damned fault. If a rich person fails, it because the "little people" screwed up. It's not now, never has been, and never will be the rich person's fault. Goddammit, why the hell is this so hard to understand?

[laughingliberal]

8. +1000 nt

[Fumesucker]

5. "We need to look forward, not backward."

At least when it comes to the actions of the wealthy and powerful.

If you are powerless and poor though your actions come under a microscope.

[notesdev]

6. "managed inflation" is pretty high up there

[Trillo]

7. In a nutshell, big money is making continual 'examples' of little people. n/t

[laughingliberal]

9. K & R nt

[truedelphi]

10. K & R. Though lately the phrase "Tomorrow the efforts to plug the

Leak might succeed" sends a shiver down our collective souls.

tht has been sounding fairly obscene for the last 45 days or so.

[earth mom]

11. I thought that line was total bullshit the first time I heard it too.

I can't believe so many people bought into the hype, propaganda and fear those bastards were trying to feed us all!

Just like I can't believe so many people with not a lot of money believed their lies and invested their hard earned money in those casinos on Wall Street that really only serve the rich! :wow:

[BzaDem]

12. In the context of too big to fail, big really means interconnected.

For example, no one would claim that Exxon is too big to fail. You can be really big but safely fail if you are not so interconnected that your failure would ultimately mean the failure of thousands of other businesses.

The big banks were too big to fail because they were too interconnected to fail. A failure of a big bank (or a number of them) would result in a huge number of non-bank business bankruptcies, a world-wide credit freeze, and huge unemployment (probably pushing 25%, not counting underemployed). Luckily, some people studied the depression, realized what we needed to do, and we avoided such a calamity. (If people think what we are facing is somehow bad compared to the depression, they really need to have their head examined.)

[bobburgster]

13. Yeah "Too big to fail" reminds me of the Titantic mentality.

The term, "Grow our company" gives me that 'fingers on the chalkboard' reaction.

[Scuba]

14. I was OK with the bailout, but only if....

...it was followed by application of anti-trust laws.

So where's step 2? We need to break up the financial instituions that are "too big to fail". By definion, if you're too big to fail, you're a monopoly.

[dkf]

15. Too big to fail means the government can't afford to come up with the insurance money

they've obligated themselves to pay in event of failure.

Seriosly where would the FDIC be if half the banks failed? We'd all be in hock for that. Sometimes people forget what promises our government has made on our behalf.

[elias7]

16. Sorry, but I don't think it's about the wealthy

Too big to fail means not just one Mom and Pop restaurant going under, but most of them. Not just one factory going under, but hundreds. Banks have still been closing at an alarming rate, or haven't you noticed, many rich people have lost fortunes, it's not about them. Your anger with the wealthy is not misplaced, but Too Big To Fail money means financial meltdown. Not just Iceland and Greece going bankrupt, but the global economies, including ours. The rich will survive; it's the small people you rightly champion who wouldn't.

The anger over TARP has more to do with how we got here rather than what is actually happening with the program. That anger is understandable. A perfect storm of lack of regulatory enforcement, greed and outright stupidity combined to place the US in the worst financial situation since the early parts of the Great Depression. But, I think you need to think bigger about "big" money. $9 trillion in combined liabilities and debts concentrated in seven highly leveraged institutions compared to the $14 trillion size of the U.S. economy. Let those institutions fail and the US, european and asian markets go down with it.

Consider how you've been affected. If you've been lucky enough to keep you job and your home, even with TARP, Americans have lost 1/3 of our net worth, 1/4 of our home value, 1/4 of our retirement assets, 1/4 of our savings...Without TARP, unemployment might well be 25% today and we'd be in the midst of another Great Depression. Restructuring would happen, but at what cost and how many lives?

You could easily argue that if they're too big to fail, then they're too big. But even Paul Krugman might disagree with that.

But as to your thesis, I don't believe it's about the rich vs poor, it's about how to structure a global economy. These are uncharted waters, and it's a process the world has to work through