Aren't bankruptcies the ultimate individual bailout? Of course, since the 'reforms' of a few years ago, bankruptcy has become 'less appealing' for high earning wage earners but it is still darn appealing for those 20% who are unemployed or under-employed with no current income to speak of. This option puts the bad debt smack dab in the lap of the mortgage banker who made the loan in the first place. Why is this a bad result? Isn't giving people money to spend in order to avoid foreclosure also a bailout for the bankers? If we tripled the bankruptcy rate, that would get their attention!!!!! Then, when the unemployed are employed again and the house prices have come down too, they can buy the same house for less money (or the bank can just sit on the house if it wants to look at it).
We should never have given any of the rapacious bankers any public money for any purpose. And if insolvent banks had been run negligently or fraudulently, vigorous prosecutions should have resulted. How many prosecutions does anyone recall from the Savings and Loan crisis of two decades ago? That never happened because of the sweetheart relationship that has existed between government and banks since about 1913. The Fed even bails out banks in the Eurozone for heaven's sake.

McClatchy, Washington DC

WASHINGTON — As Americans continue to lose their homes in record numbers, the Federal Reserve is considering making it much harder for homeowners to stop foreclosures and escape predatory home loans with onerous terms.

The Fed's proposal to amend a 42-year-old provision of the federal Truth in Lending Act has angered labor, civil rights and consumer advocacy groups along with a slew of foreclosure defense attorneys.

They're not only asking the Fed to withdraw the proposal, they also want any future changes to the law to be handled by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which begins its work next year.

In a letter to the Fed's Board of Governors, dozens of groups that oppose the measure, including the National Consumer Law Center, the NAACP and the Service Employees International Union, say the proposal is bad medicine at the wrong time.

is to point out that you can't take all of the bailouts together - you need to dis-aggregate them, because we did very different thing.

how do they assume that when only $710 billion is spent, that magically $12 billion will be?

So wonderfully written.. so perfectly stated..

Cause and Effect. All these bailouts did was to set a precedent for huge corporations to throw caution to the wind knowing if they get in trouble Uncle Sam and his bank named Joe Taxpayer will bail them out.

What about all the people who lost jobs with the bankruptcy and debt forgiveness at the beginning of this bailout?

What about the fact that average Joe Taxpayer was not allowed to buy into "free money on the table" with this great IPO unless his portfolio was a minimum of $100,000 yet China was allowed a $2 Billion buy in?

Already commercials are advertising sign and drive off is back with Zero down and Zero interest for such and such amount of time. This is what created an economic mess. Allowing people to purchase what they can not afford.

What will happen in January when the holiday jobs taper off and it is time pay off all the holiday credit that was used and how much more all their government "entitlements" will cost them in some form of taxes oh ya and the fines for those who will not purchase health insurance.

I'm not going to get too excited as an economy with an overabundance of unpaid credit will just crash again.

Their voting records clearly reflected that. Also both their reactions in the Lieberman vs Lamont race in CT also reflected their views.

If you wanted change, you would have voted for Kucinich in the primaries. But of course he was "unelectable" because of that very fact.

The right wing of the republican party realizes what the left wing of the democratic party does not -- namely - that politics is a playground teeter totter. If you want the power to shift to your side, you have to shift further away from the center, and not towards it!

Please, I am begging as an unemployed customer service professional who is very angry every time I call a toll free number and reach the heavy native-Indian accent on the other end.

If we are going to bring anything back to the crushed middle class, elimination all tax incentives for outsourcing, and instead, adding tax penalties for these practices.

The benefits???? . . .

. . . First, the $300 b gained in tax breaks currently lost in IRS revenue. Second, the billions spent in unemployment compensation would be eliminated from the budget since most of the unemployed would be able to get jobs across all sectors. Third, instead of subsidizing outsourcing, companies paid additional taxes for the practice, equal to the amount of lost US tax revenue in personal income tax revenue lost to overseas employees which would open the door for millions of US position immediately. Fourth, in the US, the newly employed would be in a position to, once again, contribute via income taxes, to the budget.

For every $ spent on tax breaks for outsourcing overseas, the potential benefit for the US could conceivably be 4x's, or more than $1,200 billion according to the figures listed in this article.

While the public numbers all seem nice, the reality is the 'profit' made by the Treasury is illusory since the cost of the loan guarantees and what not are not used when estimating cost vs. gain.

Secondly I'd note that one primary reason why the US automakers are suddenly doing better (not well) is that the US dollar is plunging precipitously. This causes foreign imports to increase in cost.

Unfortunately the reality is that this feel good story is only short term.

The impact of FIRE on manufacturing is still increasing: health care costs, FICA, and so forth are still affecting US labor competitiveness hence the US auto industry.

You also failed to mention that car sales are at 30+ year lows.

This hardly bodes well for even the short term future of the Big 3.