Should AIG be allowed too bankrupt?

I have to agree that they should be allowed to fail. That is in the sense that the taxpayers should not be paying the salaries for those CEOs who have neglected their responsibilities to the company and their shareholders. AIG has been big in the news because many feel that the collapse of AIG will effect the global economy as well because of the amount of investors and such.

I am of the opinion that those who invested in AIG, or for that matter any company that the taxpayers are having to bail out, should have know that the stock market is a gamble. Just because it was a great company at the time of investment doesn't mean you will not lose money if you hold on for too long. My question to the entire bailout, AIG especially since they have taken multiple bailouts, is why should all taxpayers and the government have to put nearly a trillion dollars towards an individual groups irresponsibility?

Yes it will hurt many people financially. However, if the govenment wants to help the American people give the money to the people! If the same money that was blown on the bailouts (I say blown because none of the bailout money can be accounted for) was given to the taxpayers it would have equaled about $35,000 per taxpayer.

Those of us who are responsible would have paid off our bills, credit cards, cars and mortgages. Thus giving the banks we were borrowing from that money back rather than our cars, houses, etc as securities. In turn giving them the ability to lend to anyone else.

Which is why they claim they need the bailout is so that they can increase lending so that more Americans will start buying. On the other hand, those who are not as responsible will go out and buy that $30,000 car, or blow their money on other consumer goods and in their own right boost the economy through their spending.

The whole bailout concept is flawed from the start on numerous levels: It is a knee jerk reaction born of the uniquely American need to "do something about it. " Since we can't really solve the problem, we'll throw money at it to keep things going until we can. It's only delaying the inevitable.It sets a dangerous precedent for corporate responsibility.

Now. Every time a corporation goes titsup, it will be begging Uncle Sam for money. And it only feeds the ready over developed sense of entitlement that many (certainly not ALL, so don't get offended, reader)gen x, y, and young-ers already have (they think the world owes them something BEFORE they work for it).

And, as scary as it would be to have all these companies fail, we will get through it. The Depression was hard, miserable, and deadly to many. But we have to face those challenges and realities, instead of stalling for time.

The difference is that we'll be going into a depression with more of a national debt than if we had just let it happen naturally. Wow. Mahalo, I hope you don't mind, but I'm copying my own answer for my blog.

I needed to vent this :) I'll give you a nod though (and I already have your widget :)).

There are some good answers already posted, but I have to say that I agree that AIG should have been allowed to fail. The company would have been broken up and the profitable divisions would have been purchased by the open market. The only part of the company which was unprofitable was the credit default swap division in CT.

They sold "insurance" on some risky investments which ended up going bust. The only problem was that they sold this insurance to people who didn't own the investments, so it wasnt really insurance. It was like buying insurance on a house you don't own.

I wish we had let all of the companies in jeopardy fail, which would have been the free market working correctly. For the federal government to come in and bail them out, we were provided a false sense of security which will only fail in the future. This is precisely "throwing good money after bad.

Yes it sould be let go. AIG will continue to lose money and will require additional (taxpayer/government) funding in the future. It's time to pull the plug on this terminally ill patient,take our losses and at least be able to put this problem behind us and move on.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.