Bailouts Quotes

As Americans, we shouldn't like bailouts. Where I come from, if someone takes a risk and they're going to make the profit from that risk, they shouldn't have the taxpayer pay for the losses. ~ Henry Paulson

If the election had turned out differently, I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and Vice President Biden could be on the road selling his book 'Going Rogaine.' ~ Sarah Palin

Whether it is Obamacare, the stimulus, Wall Street bailouts, the food safety bill - on vote after vote, Bill Nelson has chosen to side with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama over the people of Florida. ~ Adam Hasner

The Obama Administration has embraced the policies of George W. Bush, and then gone much further. Wall Street bailouts went ballistic under Obama-$700 billion under Bush, but $4.5 trillion under Obama, plus another $16 trillion in zero-interest loans for Wall Street. ~ Jill Stein

Governor Romney supported the bailout of Wall Street and decided not to support the bailout of Detroit. ~ Rick Santorum

No one forces you to buy a Twinkie. But governments do force you to fight in their wars and pay for their bailouts. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The government - the ultimate short-term-oriented player - cannot withstand much pain in the economy or the financial markets. Bailouts and rescues are likely to occur, though not with sufficient predictability for investors to comfortably take advantage. The government will take enormous risks in such interventions, especially if the expenses can be conveniently deferred to the future. Some of the price-tag is in the form of back- stops and guarantees, whose cost is almost impossible to determine. ~ Seth Klarman

I watched with incredulity as businessmen ran to the government in every crisis, whining for handouts or protection from the very competition that has made this system so productive. I saw Texas ranchers, hit by drought, demanding government-guaranteed loans; giant milk cooperatives lobbying for higher price supports; major airlines fighting deregulation to preserve their monopoly status; giant companies like Lockheed seeking federal assistance to rescue them from sheer inefficiency; bankers, like David Rockefeller, demanding government bailouts to protect them from their ill-conceived investments; network executives, like William Paley of CBS, fighting to preserve regulatory restrictions and to block the emergence of competitive cable and pay TV. And always, such gentlemen proclaimed their devotion to free enterprise and their opposition to the arbitrary intervention into our economic life by the state. Except, of course, for their own case, which was always unique and which was justified by their immense concern for the public interest. ~ William E. Simon

This nation was founded on the principle of wealth creation. As
a young Henry Clay said in the House of Representatives in 1812,
"It [wealth creation] is a passion as unconquerable as any with which
nature has endowed us. You may attempt to regulate - you cannot
destroy it." That is supposed to be the federal government's primary objective.
It is supposed to promote the creation of an environment conducive
to the creation of wealth - not job creation, not bailouts, not subsidies,
not expansion of the federal bureaucracy, and not providing lifetime
support to those who choose not to take advantage of the innumerable
opportunities that exist in this nation for them to create a better,
more productive life for themselves. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

It appears that Wall Street is not acting as a force for economic expansion, providing access to capital for companies that make things. Rather, it seems, Wall Street is using government bailouts to lever up. ~ Maria Cantwell

Our government has failed us. From the billion-dollar bailouts to the 'stimulus' package that failed to stimulate to the government takeover of health care, you cried 'Stop!' ... but the Democratic Majority in Washington has refused to listen. ~ Kevin McCarthy

Conservative evangelicals don't want government support for our faith, because we believe God created all consciences free and a state-coerced act of worship isn't acceptable to God. Moreover, we believe the gospel isn't in need of state endorsement or assistance. Wall Street may need government bailouts but the Damascus Road never does. ~ Russell D. Moore

I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how to solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government. ~ Scott Brown

The ESM, the European Stability Mechanism, is not funded by Germany alone. Twenty-seven percent of the bailout package comes from Germany. Italy and France together cover a total of 38 percent. That's reality. It makes no sense to say that everyone wants to get at Germany's money. ~ Martin Schulz

At some point the Japanese, Chinese and Saudi buyers of US and European Government bonds will see just what miserable value they offer. Then governments may have to stop all the runaway spending and bailouts and even put up interest rates. ~ Luke Johnson

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not. ~ Thomas Sowell

In the real world, banks hang onto their money for fear of making bad loans, no matter how many bailouts or stimulus packages Washington passes. ~ Dick Morris

The Europeans waited so long that they are impacting people who depend on their pensions. We are still early enough to fix it for the next generation. A few states have started scaling back their programs, while others have come hat in hand for billion-dollar federal bailouts. ~ Timothy Griffin

During the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, it probably occurred to very few average people that we were entering a period of hardship for billionaires. ~ Thomas Frank

If the 'Athens Spring' - when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts - has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from 'We the states' to 'We the European people.' ~ Yanis Varoufakis

We paid for this instead of a generation of health insurance, or an alternative energy grid, or a brand-new system of roads and highways. With the $13-plus trillion we are estimated to ultimately spend on the bailouts, we could not only have bought and paid off every single sub-prime mortgage in the country (that would only have cost $1.4 trillion), we could have paid off every remaining mortgage of any kind in this country - and still have had enough money left over to buy a new house for every American who does not already have one. ~ Matt Taibbi

What our family has done is participate in the farm programs. And so the farm programs I think essentially almost every farmer in South Dakota has participated in those, and they haven't been bailouts, they have been programs that the United States has put forward for farmers to participate in. ~ Kristi Noem

We are living in a time when the very integrity of the Constitution is being threatened daily, from federal bailouts to federal assumption of control over private business. ~ David Limbaugh

Mother Nature does not do bailouts. ~ Al Gore

The US is not a superpower. The US is a financially dependent country that foreign lenders can close down at will. Washington still hasn't learned this. American hubris can lead the administration and Congress into a bailout solution that the rest of the world, which has to finance it, might not accept. ~ Paul Craig Roberts

I think people are sick and tired of bailouts, domestically and internationally. ~ Leonard Lance

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again. ~ Eliot Spitzer

If there is no cost to be paid for the indiscriminate dumping of pollution into the earth's atmosphere, then it should be a surprise to no one that today we will dump another 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet ... We have to [act] this year, not next year. Mother Nature does not do bailouts. ~ Al Gore

Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by a 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more business cycle, bailouts, or inflation. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

In Washington, we've seen enough tax hikes, government takeovers, bailouts, and other big government solutions under Speaker Pelosi's control. ~ Kevin McCarthy

If anything, the bailouts actually hindered lending, as banks became more like house pets that grow fat and lazy on two guaranteed meals a day than wild animals that have to go out into the jungle and hunt for opportunities in order to eat. ~ Matt Taibbi