This sign says it all

[Boris Johnson]

Bullshit semantics are bullshit.

[Davethulhu]

Here's what the sign says to me: "Look how many people don't know what "Free Market" and "Socialism" mean."

[dontworrybehappy]

People keep trying to say Romney did this and that. Romney did everything Romney did with PRIVATE MONEY. Obama did everything he did (Oh God and did he ever do a lot of LOSING MONEY) with taxpayer money. There is a huge difference.

/thread.

[Professor]

The difference between "investing in a failing company" and "buying a failing company" is percent interest.

We just "invested" in a company that didn't have enough cash on hand to make payroll. They also don't have the resources to be able to fulfil a certain government contract they landed. We gave them a load of cash to make payroll. In return, they gave us a 40% stake in that contract, and allow us to use our resources to help them fulfil the contract.

If we would have "bought" them, we'd have simply allowed them to not make payroll, wait until they file bankruptcy, then bought them from the court, and assumed 100% of the contract we wanted. But, we didn't do that because we don't want all the other junk that comes along with them (they're construction).

Oh, and I agree with dontowrrybehappy - It's OK to invest private money into private companies. I dislike investing public money into private companies.

[Davethulhu]

The government should only support sure things.

*Continues to subsidize the oil industry*

[dontworrybehappy]

[exploited]

Do you think that the government should subsidize oil prices?

[dontworrybehappy]

The gov't needs to stay the hell out of private businesses, oil, green energy, everything. The gov't doesn't subsidize oil prices at all. Those are set on the world market. If there is really a market for this stuff, the free markets would demand it and then companies could develop it and produce it at a profit. Look at ethanol, a net LOSS of energy product. It has caused the price of food to skyrocket because the corn isn't being used to feed the damn cows, its being used to very inefficiently produce ethanol. The ONLY way ethanol can be produced at a profit is with gov't intervention. This is not right. Ethanol reduces the gas mileage of vehicles. People are going out of their way to get ethanol free gas.

The gov't doesn't do much right.

[JDHURF]

Right, the government should just step back and let private business do whatever it wants. It's the government's fault that Wall Street incinerated several trillion dollars off of the face of the Earth, the banks and financial institutions didn't have anything to do with it....oh, hold up, wait a minute there.

[exploited]