There is really no such thing as too big to fail. In the case of the "financial crisis", the few failing banks should have been allowed to fail. Some were and the sky did not fall. There were plenty of sound ones who were not involved in the nonsense. The same can be said for the automotive industry. The bailouts were nothing more than a transfer of wealth orchestrated by the government. From the middle class and the wealthy, to the incompetent clowns in the government and private industry who created the mess in the first place.
There is absolutely nothing worse for the people at large than the collusion between government and the private enterprise. It is very simply the definition of corruption. Read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith for more love.
As for AT&T and T-Mobile, the government created the problem in the first place. By selling spectrum, they necessitate the existence of large massive companies in the space. They're the only ones who can afford the spectrum. If the government instead chose to keep the spectrum open, like say the way they do for WiFi, you would literally be able to start your own cellphone company in your garage ... and there would naturally be quite a bit more players in the space. They would still need to cooperate to make things work, but having more choices is the goal here.
If you look hard enough, behind every market problem and failure, you'll find a fat bureaucrat and fat "business man" working together to keep each other fat and the rest of us miserable.
> There is really no such thing as too big to fail.
Yes, actually there is. Too big to fail means that when an institution fails, its default will cause a cascade failure of other institutions relying on it -- and still other institutions relying on those -- including otherwise healthy ones whose only mistake was being integrated with the world economy.
This can ripple through the whole economy and work in tandem with the Paradox of Deleveraging to effectively cause a GDP death spiral. (See also: Great Depression.)
Not sure how we got onto the financial crisis, but the idea that the banking system was outright saved is a fallacy. Tons of banks failed and continue to fail:
The big banks were provided funds from the Fed-- whose job it is to lend money in such crises--the majority of which was paid back and has returned a tidy profit to the Treasury. The public perception of events is out of whack on this one.
As far as the OP, there's a long way to go before the US is Canada as far as crappy cell service provision, but this is a step in the wrong direction.
Edit: "this" referring to T-Mobile having a negative future outlook.
The money was 'paid back' by banks who got zero-interest loans from the Fed discount window. This way, they get to say "Hey, we paid back TARP", the Obama administration gets to say "The bailout wasn't a boondoggle", and the banks also borrow money from the government for free (from the discount window) and then loan it back to the government at 2% (by buying 10-year T-Bills.) Wholesale rate arbitrage for doing nothing. Must be nice to be "too big to fail".
There is absolutely nothing worse for the people at large than the collusion between government and the private enterprise. It is very simply the definition of corruption. Read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith for more love.
As for AT&T and T-Mobile, the government created the problem in the first place. By selling spectrum, they necessitate the existence of large massive companies in the space. They're the only ones who can afford the spectrum. If the government instead chose to keep the spectrum open, like say the way they do for WiFi, you would literally be able to start your own cellphone company in your garage ... and there would naturally be quite a bit more players in the space. They would still need to cooperate to make things work, but having more choices is the goal here.
If you look hard enough, behind every market problem and failure, you'll find a fat bureaucrat and fat "business man" working together to keep each other fat and the rest of us miserable.