bail outs were illegal

[stone]

The Hussman web site has an interesting piece about how he considers that the bailouts were in contradiction of the federal reserve act and were counter productive for the US economy:
http://www.hussman.net/wmc/wmc111010.htm

"The reason that wages are lower in developing countries is primarily because Americans are blessed to have an economy that has a legacy of accumulating productive investment and educating its workers. If we allow those advantages to slide, by misallocating investments, and diverting public funds from research, development, education and infrastructure in order to bail out reckless speculations gone bad, there is no inherent reason why other countries cannot rise to economic dominance. It's our choice. We have far too great a need for productive investment than to use our scarce resources to bail out poor stewards of capital who gambled the nation's savings and look to the government to make them whole."