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I don't understand this "bailout" thingy.
Let's say i own a company or a bank. I give the management of that business to a poor manager, who runs the business to the ground. Who pays the debt company owns? I do. Of course.
Can someone seriously claim that the owners of these banks and companies don't have money to pay these debts? I don't believe that. They have for years received huge profits and salaries.
Who owns these businesses, they pay. It is so simple.
by kjr63 on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 09:15:09 AM EST
Shareholders are not liable for remaining debts when a company has gone bust and been liquidated. As much money as can be liquidated is given to the creditors and if there isn't enough to cover all debts, well too bad for the creditors who were stupid enough to loan the money to the company in the first place.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 10:03:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Bailouts rescue (in this order) management, shareholders, creditors and (in the case of banks) depositors. Depositors don't actually need a bailout to be rescued since there is deposit guarantee.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 10:09:11 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The devil was in the ultra-short term mega-huge money incentives.
Managers were rewarded with hundreds of millions of dollars for creating an illusion, the price of said illusion being the existence of their bank (or similar institution) some 3 years later.
If performance rewards were kept on hold for, say, five years, they would have received ZERO. Instead, it was hundreds of millions. Sweet.

"The womb that spawned that thing is fertile yet"
by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 10:25:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
An interesting thing to note is that the average French employee indeed gets "participation" in the form of company stock that he can't sell for five years...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 08:02:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sounds like a good idea, I like it, and something de Gaulle would have liked. And if you work at a company which you think will kind of get into trouble you could always counter your "compulsory" shareholding by shorting the share at the same time.    

We have something like it in Sweden too at certain companies where employes often can buy a fixed amount of shares in their employee for a below market price. The problem here is that people are generally really bad at risk management, and lots of people will end up with large sums invested in this single company and no other companies.

So when the company falls on hard times you not only lose your job, but also your savings. This at the very time you would actually need those savings...

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid (arvid.hallen at gmail.com) on Sat Oct 11th, 2008 at 09:05:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The problem is, a single employee is not all that responsible in the way his company's stock moves. Also, these stocks are usually held through mutual funds, which means the employee doesn't really get the vote his share of ownership grants him.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Sat Oct 11th, 2008 at 09:37:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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