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The alleged purpose of the various bailouts was to stabilize the economy and to set the groundwork for a recovery. However, the reality seems to be that the bailouts are enriching the financial companies at the expense of the taxpayers.
While the massive gifts of cash to these companies are a thing of the past (for now), they are now able to exploit incredibly low interest rates to generate significant profits. The banks are also apparently still able to profit from their toxic assets, including entire banks, by getting taxpayers to continue to take care of their problems.
This is hardly surprising. Despite all the talk about the Democrats being socialist and Obama being anti-business, the fact seems to be that things are just as they have always been. The folks in power, in general, see to it that the financial companies are well taken care of and that taxpayer money gets funneled to the right places.
This transference of money from the taxpayers to the financial folks seems to be rather unfair. After all, the financial folks were largely to blame for the financial mess. They also seem to be doing nothing to really earn this money, but rather are simply being handed profits at the expense of everyone else. Given the large number of unemployed Americans, it would seem a better choice to use the money to help them, rather than to pile even more profits into the corporate coffers.
As a final point, given the rather large federal deficit, it would seem to make sense to curb the channeling of money into these financial institutions. After all, why should the nation go into debt so that these few might profit even more?