Business & Professional Ethics 6th Edition by Leonard Brooks

Exercise 33

The government said that AIG was "too big to fail." It was concerned that if AIG declared bankruptcy, then individuals holding personal insurance as well as other investments would have no insurance and would be in danger as the financial and liquidity crisis deepened. But many felt that the federal government should not be investing in publicly traded companies. There is risk in the marketplace, and one such risk is that occasionally businesses go bankrupt. Should the federal government have bailed out AIG, especially when it had not rescued Lehman Brothers and had let Merrill Lynch be taken over by Bank of America?