The US government made $15B from the 2008 bailouts.
That's 0.6% return on investment which is kinda poor but overall the bailout was profitable for US taxpayers.
That's 0.6% return on investment which is kinda poor but overall the bailout was profitable for US taxpayers.
> Pretty much. The Treasury Department injected $412 billion into banks, carmakers and other struggling companies through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. As of the end of last year, it had collected everything it had paid out in bailout funds and then some, leaving the government with a profit of $12 billion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-guide-to-t...
(2018)
If I go unemployed for a few months and can't pay my house [1], unfortunately there's nobody to bail me out. I'll lose the house and go homeless, notwithstanding the fact that I'd be willing to pay that 1.5% interest over 10 years for a liquidity bailout for myself during those times. Unfortunately I'm not too-big-to-fail.
[1] Ironically, in the downturn caused by those very same companies we're talking about.
The same applies here: these companies would go under without state intervention, the very least you could do is gain a large stake in the equity of those companies, in exchange for bailing them out. That and criminal liability for the people in charge.
That money would not have made huge returns anymore than medicare does.
We _do_ gain from bailing them out - we tax them. We do not put business owners in jail for losing the risk game.
There are plenty of corrupt governments that do the sort of things you are suggesting, such as Russia. They are not considered effective economies and their corruption ruins their ability to be functional.
if we ignore the hundreds (at least) of billions $$$ that the fed created and flooded the world economy with, in order to make that $15B "win" possible.
of course it was mostly non-Americans who ate the gigantic costs, thanks to the dollar's unique status as world reserve currency. but that just makes it worse, from a moral hazard POV.