The counterfeit bailout

"We spent hundreds of billions of dollars to save the richest companies and people in America, offering them a safety net that we had long since decided not to grant the poorest Americans - lest they 'take advantage' of it... What the banks were supposed to do with our money was to start lending again - which they had stopped doing - to credit-worthy businesses and homeowners for whom critical capital had dried up.

The American people were asked to trust the smart people who knew best and to count on the banks to restore the credit flow to individuals and small businesses that needed it. But some banks bought up (with our money) stocks, bonds, and other assets at rock-bottom prices and then made a killing in profits as the stock market stabilised and began to rise again. Then, to congratulate themselves for seizing this opportunity for making a profit, they gave out record compensation bonuses to themselves whilst wages for the rest of the country continued to fall and more and more people found themselves without a job at all.

It was amorality play almost too unbelievably bad to be true ; yet that is exactly what happened."

From Rediscovering Values by Jim Wallis, 2010 (Hardcover, p220)