To the editor:

The stock market rises on the news that the treasury is going to guarantee the assets of Citigroup. If said corporation is “too big to fail,” why does the government have to step in — the government steps in because the company has failed.

There is a question to be asked, which is why the government, using money that does not yet exist, chooses to support some entities and not others — in essence deciding which corporations will survive and which will fail. In a free enterprise system, corporations succeed or fail on their merits in the market. The ultimate problem is that the corporations that are not presently in trouble will be disadvantaged by the guarantees to the corporations that are wards of the state. And if they fail as a result of this, there will be no funds to bail them out.

Of course, there are no funds to bail out the ones that are being bailed out now other than the Weimar Republic approach of creating more money by fiat.

Earl L. Haehl,
Lawrence