Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamesaguilar | Hacker News Reader

Am I misreading number point two or does it basically say, "One mistake and you are out?"

With the qualifier of "if the mistake is big enough"

If the mistake is bad enough for you to go out of business, yes. Isn't that how it should work, you take the risk and you reap the rewards? As it says in #4: "capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards."

Basically, he's saying that we should allow banks to go bankrupt instead of bailing them out.

Here's what he actually said. It's pretty clear:

  2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be 
  bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be 
  free, small and riskbearing.

And the next sentence criticises what was done.

  We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the
  1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took
  over the government. This is surreal.

Yikes, I just realized that I put down the wrong point. Point 3 was the one I objected to.

He also mentions academic economists. I guess that was my main objection, especially since many academic economists did not support the policies that ultimately caused the financial crisis.

Wouldn't that have killed the US economy?

He's also saying that no bank should be too big to fail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com