@ISIDEWITHQuestionseconomyStarted 5yrs agoActive 5mos ago

Should the government acquire equity stakes in companies it bails out during a recession?

A state-owned enterprise is a business enterprise where the government or state has significant control through full, majority, or significant minority ownership. During the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak Larry Kudlow, the White House’s top economic advisor, said the Trump administration would consider asking for an equity stake in corporations that needed taxpayer aid. “One of the ideas is, if we provide assistance, we might take an equity position,” Kudlow said Wednesday at the White House, adding that the 2008 bailout of [the automaker General Motors] had been a good deal…  

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Answer Overview

Response rates from 488 Left voters.

53%
Yes
47%
No
49%
Yes
41%
No
4%
Yes, the government should receive equity for any financial aid they provide to companies
3%
No, the government should never own shares of private companies
0%
Yes, but divest over time after 'repayment' is obtained.
2%
No, this impedes technological progress due to competition being stifled
0%
No, and the government should never bail out companies during a recession

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Other Popular Answers

Unique answers from Left voters whose views went beyond the provided options.

 @9RRFVHVfrom Oklahoma  answered…5mos5MO

The government shouldnt bail out companies, it should bail out it's people

 @9KRLW5Fanswered…10mos10MO

Only in extreme cases, buying at market prices and reselling as soon as possible

 @9HLJV4Nanswered…1yr1Y

No, the government shouldnt bail out businesses in the first place

 @9GC2R3Sanswered…1yr1Y

Yes, and transfer the equity into a sovereign wealth fund (Government Holding Company)

 @9CHQK8Ganswered…2yrs2Y

Yes, and transfer all into a government owned profit-oriented holding company to manage all stock and bonds in government hand

 @99D45WHfrom Illinois  answered…2yrs2Y

No, the government shouldn't bail out companies. It permits corruption and the use of taxpayer money to save failing businesses. It would be better to simply cut taxes.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2 days2D

U.S. Bans Medical Debt from Credit Reports

The U.S. government on Tuesday issued new rules to remove roughly $49 billion in unpaid medical debts from Americans’ credit reports, even as debt collectors and incoming Republican leaders have signaled they might try to overturn the policy entering the Trump administration.The new prohibition targets credit-reporting companies, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which assemble detailed dossiers about consumers that they furnish to banks, employers and landlords so that they can evaluate a person’s finances.Under the new policy, these credit reports can no longer include past-due medical bills, and companies that obtain a person’s credit history cannot evaluate their application based on outstanding medical debts. The regulation from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not forgive any health-related debts.The agency estimated Tuesday that its rules would help about 15 million Americans, some of whom have been unable to obtain jobs, apartments, credit cards or mortgages if unavoidable medical debts appear as glaring, derogatory marks on their credit histories, lowering their scores.Many of these people carry medical debt despite having some form of health insurance. The CFPB said some of the past-due balances are actually erroneous, reflecting amounts already paid or greatly overstated totals compared to what a person actually owes.“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” Rohit Chopra, the agency’s director, said in a statement. “The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”The CFPB rules are likely to draw sharp opposition from credit-reporting agencies and debt collectors, which blasted the agency last year when it first proposed the idea.

▲  1410 replies

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…3 days3D

Biden bans new offshore oil drilling along most of US coastline

President Joe Biden announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the US coastline on Monday in a move designed to bolster his environmental and climate legacy as he prepares to leave office.The order will protect 625mn acres of ocean on the US east coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, as well as portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska, the White House said on Monday.“My decision reflects what the coastal communities, business and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs,” Biden said.The executive action will not prevent oil and gas companies obtaining leases in the central and western parts of the Gulf of Mexico, areas that produce almost 15 per cent of the nation’s oil supplies. Nevertheless, the move is expected to complicate the policy agenda of incoming president Donald Trump, who has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and boost US oil production, even though it is already at a record level.The Trump transition team said it was a disgraceful decision designed to exact “political revenge on the American people” and the incoming president said he would immediately “unban” Biden’s prohibition on new offshore drilling.“I have the right to unban it immediately . . . we can’t let that happen to our country. It’s our greatest, it’s really our greatest economic asset,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in an interview on Monday.Biden’s action will probably be challenged by the oil industry in court and face pushback from Republicans in Congress. But overturning the order could prove challenging and may require an act of Congress, according to legal experts.Biden is using his authority under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, to protect the areas from drilling — the same mechanism which former president Barack Obama used previously to ban offshore drilling in some Arctic and Atlantic waters in 2016.In 2019, a federal judge ruled that an executive order by former president Donald Trump that lifted an Obama-era ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean was unlawful.

▲  1910 replies

 @ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W

Defense Bill Blocks Transgender Care To Minors

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.

▲  2016 replies3 agree1 disagree