One of this morning’s lead stories was that GM had priced its IPO and $33 per share. It expects to raise some $20 billion. Not bad for a company that, just 2 years ago, was on the verge of vaporizing.
Lost in all the mindless complaints about” bailouts” is the fact that our government is going to profit on virtually every industry it helped during the economic collapse. The one exception may be AIG, but the jury is still out on that one. So the lament that Wall Street was saved on the backs of taxpayers is false. The taxpayers are profiting from the exercise.
More importantly, while Tea Party folks and their henchmen lament the “government takeover” of banks and auto companies, no one ever mentions the millions of jobs that were saved through the effort. These were not government takeovers as much as a government intervention necessary to stave off total economic destruction, destruction from which we might never have recovered. People seem to think that they would be better off if the government had done nothing, if we had no banking system or automobile industry, and we had 70% unemployment instead of 9.5%. Why?
I just hope that, as they relentlessly fight against tougher regulation, our industries and the people who manage them reflect on the fact the government they “resist” is the same one that saved their asses and the asses of those off whom they can continue to profit.
Ken Wexler is the founding partner of Wexler Wallace, a leading firm in complex class action and multidistrict litigation.
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