Americans are not fans of the financial crisis.
While this is old news, what is new, as the op-ed puts it, is that “Wall Street sharpies went to court to argue that they didn’t benefit enough from the bailouts and that taxpayers should pay them tens of billions of dollars more.”
Steven Pearlstein, a business and economics columnist with the Washington Post, published a commentary over the issues surrounding the bailout.
In two separate cases, the government now stands accused of overstepping its authority when it took extraordinary measures to prevent a financial meltdown in the fall of 2008. The Wall Street figures who are suing say their property was seized without compensation, in violation of the Constitution. One case was brought by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the legendary former chief executive of AIG who built it into the world’s largest insurer. Filing the other case is a group of hedge funds that bought Fannie and Freddie stock for pennies per share after the companies were put in government conservatorship.
The piece goes a lot more in depth on the intricacies of the "arrogant" billionaires on Wall Street. While the debate over the financial crisis never seems to rest, Pearlstein concluded that with billions of dollars at stake decisions are almost certain to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.
