Setting up for the eventual bailout. Remember - "we can't let banks fail or it'll be a depression"?

I remember a meme that spread to that effect, but it was similarly divorced from reality. Hundreds of banks failed during the financial crisis, including multiple which were very large. There were a few cases like Wachovia, where an unhealthy bank was required to sell itself in order to avoid a technical failure that would have impacted over 10 million Americans' access to their money. But this was still unpleasant for existing Wachovia shareholders.

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watwut 2 days ago | parent [-]

I remember large banks that caused the failure to be bailed out. And talk of trickle down economics, except that average joe was not bailed outed, but punished.

I remember robo signing of home foreclosures with no checks and people loosing houses despite paying debts.

	▲	SpicyLemonZest a day ago \| parent [-]
		> I remember large banks that caused the failure to be bailed out. And talk of trickle down economics, except that average joe was not bailed outed, but punished. Another thing that is commonly remembered but did not really happen as described. If you had to identify any particular bank as having caused the crisis, it would have to be Lehman Brothers, which was not bailed out. But really, it was a systemic crisis to which TARP was deployed as a systemic solution. Much of the "bailout" talk is based on memories of AIG, which is not a bank and behaved far more irresponsibly than any bank did; they seem not to have bothered hedging their exposure to widespread mortgage defaults at all. > I remember robo signing of home foreclosures with no checks and people loosing houses despite paying debts. This did happen, yes, and that was bad.