Sadly that's the only thing that will prevent another situation like this from happening again. Short term pain for long-term gain. As I say again, if you are prepared to enjoy the good times, you should be prepared to endure the hard times. If I was an american tax payer I would be outraged as I deliberately avoided the markets for fear of this type of reprisal. Apparently I should have jumped all in knowing that I was going to get bailed out: MORAL HAZARD.
And it's not as big of a problem as you seem to say it would be. Most of the major commercial banks have written off their bad debt and now relatively solvent. The risk taking banks that have not written off the debt and continue to package it in the hopes of a market upturn will be the ones to fail. Those are investment banks. Investment bank failures like Bear Stearns and Lehman have not hurt individual investors nearly as bad as a commercial bank.
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