The problem wasn't the bailout, but everything that led up to it

As awful as it was, it had to be done. Every good American hated it. I hated it. You hated it. Only the assholes with the multi-million dollar bonuses were okay with it. But it had to be done. Well, given the actions and in-actions in the decades that preceded the bank failures...it had to be done. That is the real problem, everything that Congress (and the administrations, Reagan through Bush II) did and didn't do preceding the bank bailout (e.g., the Phil Gramm lead and Clinton-signed repeal of Glass-Steagall Act of 1933). Once all of that was in place, we didn't really have a choice. But of course, once it was over we again had a choice to take action to make sure it never happened again. And Republicans again choose to do nothing. So in a sense, the GOP again chose to set us up for more bank bailouts in the future. Let's hope that the recent legislation is strong enough and the regulators are ballsy enough so that actions can and will be taken to ensure that the banks are NOT too-big-to-fail and that oversight ensures that they are managing wall street more responsibly than a back-room poker game. And of course, let's hope that Congress doesn't take action in a few years to begin to weaken it again.