Nothing New Under the Sun

In reading The Creature from Jekyll Island, a book about the history of the Federal Reserve, I have become aware of a few other government bailouts in our history. If one looks closely enough at political economic history (international and domestic), one can find that most any "new" policy has been tried before in some fashion and just been forgotten by us. It works out conveniently for some ambitious politicians though. Relabeling also helps cut down on recognition.

For example: This site contains a handy graph demonstrating the size of US government bailouts since 1970. Of course, TARP is the largest, but it's not the first of its kind. A look into how these arrangements turned out is a fun trail of investigation. Lockheed is an interesting one because they appealed to the government for a bailout on the terms that jobs would be lost, well being of the economy, etc. So the government did and then Lockheed started turning a profit. But the profit came from defense contracts commissioned by the government. To that I say hmmm.