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It's all made from our data, anyway, so it should be ours to use as we want

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[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 87 points 1 week ago

So banks will be public domain when they're bailed out with taxpayer funds, too, right?

[-] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 61 points 1 week ago

They should be, but currently it depends on the type of bailout, I suppose.

For instance, if a bank completely fails and goes under, the FDIC usually is named Receiver of the bank's assets, and now effectively owns the bank.

[-] booly@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

At the same time, if a bank goes under, that means they owe more than they own, so "ownership" of that entity is basically worthless. In those cases, a bailout of the customers does nothing for the owners, because the owners still get wiped out.

The GM bailout in 2009 also involved wiping out all the shareholders, the government taking ownership of the new company, and the government spinning off the newly issued stock.

AIG required the company basically issue new stock to dilute owners down to 20% of the company, while the government owned the other 80%, and the government made a big profit when they exited that transaction and sold the stock off to the public.

So it's not super unusual. Government can take ownership of companies as a condition of a bailout. What we generally don't necessarily want is the government owning a company long term, because there's some conflict of interest between its role as regulator and its interest as a shareholder.

[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Public domain wouldn't be the right term for banks being publicly owned. At least for the normal usage of Public Domain in copyright. You can copy text and data, you can't copy a company with unique customers and physical property.

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 4 points 1 week ago

Oh good point. I'm not actually sure what the phrase would be.. Publicly owned?

[-] stalfoss@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Just FYI of the bank bailouts in the US, the banks paid back the bailout plus interest back to the government. Meaning the govt actually made a profit off the bailout. There’s a lot of things wrong with both banks and the govt, but generally this is not one of them. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-bailout-was-11-years-ago-were-still-tracking-every-penny

[-] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 1 week ago

Super interesting, learned something new today. Thanks!

this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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