We are spending a few hundred billion making sure banks and their bondholders are solvent.
Oddly enough, there are not two groups who need to be made solvent, but three!
Our economic system probably would have crashed if we had not given the banks billions.
However, the reason the banks were in such bad shape was that there were and are many millions of people who can no longer afford to pay their mortgages. Because these individuals do not pay their mortgages, the banks faced and are facing huge losses.
The bailout system we created...
did bailout the banks effectively. However, millions of people are facing eviction, default, bankruptcy and other personal economic disasters due to not being able to afford their mortgages is the direct cause of the crisis.
If the people had been bailed out, the banks would have been bailed out, and the bondholders would be bailed out. the system we put into place only bailed out two of the three important stakeholders in our system.
As a result, there are many millions of people who are going to be facing bad debt and losing their homes, while banks and their bondholders were bailed out.