NEW YORK – American taxpayers and stock owners have taken it on the chin in this financial crisis. The same can't be said of bondholders who lent money to the most troubled banks.
The Obama administration is now ordering General Motors Corp.'s creditors to make sacrifices to save the ailing automaker. Yet bondholders of financial companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. so far have been mostly left off the hook, even though the government has given the banks billions of dollars in bailout money.
Many those bondholders, in fact, are still profiting from their investments so long as they haven't had to sell, while the rest of us deal with vanishing wealth.
"The sum total of the policy responses to this crisis has been to defend the bondholders of distressed financial institutions at the public expense," said John Hussman, who runs an investment firm in Ellicott City, Md.
Hussman is among critics who say bank bondholders shouldn't be shielded from all that has gone wrong in the past two years. "When one lends money to a financial institution, one also assumes the risk and responsibility of bearing the losses," Hussman observed.
The Obama administration is now ordering General Motors Corp.'s creditors to make sacrifices to save the ailing automaker. Yet bondholders of financial companies such as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. so far have been mostly left off the hook, even though the government has given the banks billions of dollars in bailout money.
Many those bondholders, in fact, are still profiting from their investments so long as they haven't had to sell, while the rest of us deal with vanishing wealth.
"The sum total of the policy responses to this crisis has been to defend the bondholders of distressed financial institutions at the public expense," said John Hussman, who runs an investment firm in Ellicott City, Md.
Hussman is among critics who say bank bondholders shouldn't be shielded from all that has gone wrong in the past two years. "When one lends money to a financial institution, one also assumes the risk and responsibility of bearing the losses," Hussman observed.
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