Should We Bail Out Or Bale Together?

The big question is whether the bailout is working or can work.

It is interesting how we Americans recently poured $140 billion into Citibank ($50 billion cash and the rest thru off-balance sheet Fed incentives, loans, and cash infusions), and the market cap today is only $19.35 billion!

God bless america. Where else could such a ruse be pulled off? Why didn't the US just buy all of the outstanding shares at market prices and go forward with a truth commission like investigation? Once we own the company, we own the history. Then we can prosecute and maybe seize assets and get our money back.

Halliburton has a market cap of $16.4 billion. I think the USA should buy it so we can own the history and start prosecutions.

Even though it could cost us a few hundred billion to buy these companies at their market values, and we could definitely argue that the purchases are in the public interest, it comes down to a simple cost/benefit analysis: it would be cheaper to know the truth than to keep paying our captors.