… as hundreds of billions of dollars are flooding into artificial intelligence, there are serious concerns that an AI bubble could trigger another bailout with taxpayer money.
In the interview that follows, leading progressive economist Gerald Epstein, who initiated and directs the Game Changers project at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talks about AI’s impact on finance and the bailout problem and how a transformative public finance strategy can revive democracy, promote equity and social justice, and build strong and sustainable communities.
You can’t just not have a bailout. The AI companies have more debt than value, and most of their value is only valuable to other AI companies. If there’s no bailout, the lenders don’t get paid, and the lenders lose almost everything. The employees of the AI companies will lose their jobs. The companies that have been doing significant business with the AI companies will lose all that business. It’s too late to completely avoid the recession and bailouts, and few people in charge are interested in doing anything that would reduce the impact. We’re all paying for it, one way or the other.
If we save the lenders, they don’t learn their lesson about lending money to evil things that don’t make any money.
Besides I thought they were so wealthy because they took on all the risk right? If we pay one way or another anyway then we may as well let the fuckers go down in flames.
Yeah whether they are bailed out or not we all lose.
Like how the banks can “offer” you personal loans with 15%+ interest, even with a perfect credit score. Or like 7% for a mortgage.
Their profits are larger than ever, but it’s socialism or something if we were to expect them to have an emergency fund or something.
Are you one of the lenders? Do you have money invested for savings or retirement in a managed fund?
Nah, its in a jar in the back yard.
Too effing bad. Choices have consequences.
If it’s too late to avoid the economic fallout, we should at least avoid making the people responsible for creating this mess richer at the cost of taxpayer dollars. Maybe we’ll all take a hit, but let the shortsighted fuckers eat their own debt.
Spend the bailout money helping them instead. Maybe even make some sort of society wide safety net, so people don’t need to fear losing their jobs through no fault of their own. Let the companies sink or swim on their own merits.