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Comment by jjeaff | Hacker News Reader

I'm not aware of them buying any individual stocks recently. They did, however buy several (like GM) during the 2008 recession.

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Right, they bailed out corporations and threw people out of their homes. Never forgive, never forget.

I’d still largely say this Fed is departing from history. The economy last saw a pandemic like covid in 1918. And that was during a world war.

> Right, they bailed out corporations and threw people out of their homes. Never forgive, never forget.

So you would've preferred that the whole system came crashing down and believe that average people would've had a better long term outcome from that?

I think there’s a good argument to be made that lots of companies doing bad things and taking bad risks socialize their failure, thus learning nothing except they can get away with it again on the publics dime. Being too big to fail is an added bonus. How is the public better off in that scenario? Regulation can act as a bandaid but there is always another loophole to exploit.

There could have been a round of modern “trust busting” ala Teddy Roosevelt. Too big to fail is a clear center of too much market power. (That the smaller banks like credit unions weathered that era better underscores the need for some “right sizing”.)

> Right, they bailed out corporations and threw people out of their homes. Never forgive, never forget.

Who is "they"? The fed I presume? I doubt they were directly involved in foreclosures.

Bailing out companies keeps people in jobs & backstops the assets that comprise retirement/pension systems, both of which keep people in their homes. You could find ways of keeping more people in their homes but they’d almost certainly include bailing out companies, it’s easy to implement and cost effective.

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