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335 points aspenmayer | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.199s | source
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GeekyBear ◴[] No.45008439[source]
Didn't we already cross this particular Rubicon during the auto bailout a decade ago?

Other examples:

> Since the 1950s, the federal government has stepped in as a backstop for railroads, farm credit, airlines (twice), automotive companies, savings and loan companies, banks, and farmers.

Every situation has its own idiosyncrasies, but in each, the federal government intervened to stabilize a critical industry, avoiding systemic collapse that surely would have left the average taxpayer much worse off. In some instances, the treasury guaranteed loans, meaning that creditors would not suffer if the relevant industry could not generate sufficient revenue to pay back the loans, leading to less onerous interest rates.

A second option was that the government would provide loans at relatively low interest rates to ensure that industries remained solvent.

In a third option, the United States Treasury would take an ownership stake in some of these companies in what amounts to an “at-the-market” offering, in which the companies involved issue more shares at their current market price to the government in exchange for cash to continue business operations.

https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2022/08/23/piece-of-the-acti...

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Fricken ◴[] No.45008546[source]
The other day I went down a rabbit hole reading about the history of insulin, and learned about the Canada Development Corporation:

>The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto, created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment. It was technically not a crown corporation as it was intended to generate a profit and was created with the intention that, eventually, the government would own no more than 10% of its holdings; it did not require approvals of the Governor-in-Council for its activities and did not report to parliament. Its objectives and capitalization, however, were set out by parliament and any changes to its objects decided upon by the Board of Directors had to be approved by parliament.

The CDC was created as a result of Walter Gordon's Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, and the 1968 Watkins Report commissioned by Gordon, in an attempt to redress the problem of foreign ownership in the Canadian economy by stimulating the development of Canadian owned corporations, particularly in the field of natural resources and industry

About 31,000 private shareholders invested in the corporation. An early purchase of the corporation was Connaught Laboratories, the original manufacturer of insulin.

Major investments owned by the CDC included holdings in petroleum, mines and petrochemicals including Polymer Corporation, an asset transferred to it by the Canadian government. By 1982 the Canadian government had a 58% stake in the Savin Corporation.

In 1986 the Corporation was dismantled as part of the Mulroney government's program of privatization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Development_Corporation

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1. rimbo789 ◴[] No.45013054[source]
Polymer Corp itself is a fascinating origination. Created in ww2 to create synthetic rubber - which the Germans had all of the ip of - it was a wildly successful research to commercialization entity. It was so successful after the war it was considered too important to privatize and it stayed as a crown corp for decades.

I believe they even did a run of $10 celebrating it.