Above all it was a managerial bailout. The people who made the actual decisions that led to the crisis made it out fine, as long as their company was lucky enough to be bailed out.
and the entire planet is better for it. any idea how much worse things would have gotten if regulators (bernanke, paulson) hadn't drawn a line in the sand somewhere? those guys are heroes; they go down as the best treasury secretary and fed chair in history.
Far worse than that: Bernanke publicly proclaimed over and over for years that there was nothing to worry about. Almost right up to the point of collapse, he was saying that the risk of a bad recession or large housing implosion were very low.
