It's not a question of bailout or no bailout - some sort of bailout will happen no matter what. It's a question of what public attitude to take toward it. This is a rare moment - the whole country is paying attention to national economic policy at the very moment an act of supreme bourgeois hypocrisy is about to be carried out. It should not go to waste. If the powers that be desperately want a bailout quickly and have to go anxiously hat in hand to Congress to get one, the proper attitude is to yell about the hypocrisy of bailouts for bankers and austerity for workers. That's the only possible way to force them to give something in return - you have to scare them into thinking they might not get it if they don't make it fairer. If you don't do that you're not even trying. Part and parcel of that attitude is closely scrutinizing the details of any particular bailout plan to expose whether bankers are getting coddled in unnecessary ways (or where the cult of homeownership is being gratuitously propitiated). Again, if you wave away any such scrutiny by airily saying that in the end public money will have to be spent one way or another, it defeats the whole purpose. I thought you were a supporter of constructive irresponsibility. I think you're overly preoccupied with exorcising the ghost of William Jennings Bryan; that's the least of our problems.
Seth