To be fair, we don’t know what the balance sheet of mom & pop Quality Electric Co. in Birmingham, Alabama might have looked like in this particular case either – but we’re guessing it couldn’t have been any worse than, say, what was about to happen to Millennium Management and ExodusPoint Capital Management. Unfortunately, in this “race to the bottom, er, bailout” we’ll probably never know for sure how the “little guys” might have fared against the “big guys” head to head, because according to BNN Bloomberg someone stepped in to pick the winners and losers before anyone even had a chance to get to the finish line…
BNN Bloomberg: Resentment grows on Main Street over bailout winners and losers
“…waiting for approval of her US$40,000 small-business loan last week when the government’s first-come-first-served lending program ran out of cash.“
“Smaller companies like us are probably just going to be washed under the rug”
Meanwhile….
“Some billion-dollar hedge funds, too, have benefited from quick Fed action. A number of them, including Millennium Management and ExodusPoint Capital Management…”
“The basis trade was in a position to tank… The Fed responded, limiting losses. Both Millennium and ExodusPoint declined to comment.”
So…
“…if one of the lessons of 2008 is to help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the lesson seems to be only partly learned. Americans live in two separate and unequal worlds, and the bailouts reflect this.”
“I really have no faith,” Shultz said. “I have no faith in the system. In this government. In this leadership.”
Well…
Not much new here, really. We wrote about a similar game two years ago… in case this one sounds familiar.