bailouts were begun in Cheney's reign. not bailing out the banks would have lead to a World-wide collapse that would have made Great Depression look like child's play.
Considering the bail-out was already under-way when Obama took office, a change in course would have been even more problematic. I think it's easy to say Obama has been too deferential to advisors who seem a bit too impressed with Wall Street types. But he had been handed a disaster and he didn't have any time to think of fundamental changes in policy. He HAD TO STOP A TOTAL COLLAPSE OF THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM.
Some say he should have nationalized the banks. I don't really think that is realistic. I do wish though he had done more to provide credit from the Government directly to people and small businesses who needed it. I knew that credit would be slow to be made available by banks. Their books are still in terrible shape because they held onto many bad assets (they didn't want to sell them to the TARP and take the losses) so that doesn't put them in a great position for lending.
The Republican policies of decades of fighting any attempts to increase minimum wage, of shifting tax burden away from the very rich to the middle class - these do not promote a healthy growing economy and healthy job growth.
The last decade of Republican economic policies was a disaster for the average AMerican - Washington Post. If people don't have money to spend there isn't enough demand for goods and services to cause employers to add new employees. THe REpublicans have been for deregulation of financial industry for a long time. They got what they wanted in Cheney's reign (and with the insertion of the
http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/05/foreclosure-phil">Commodities Futures Modernization act as a rider to the Omnibus Spending bill, 2000 - an 11,000 page document. Nobody even knew that bill which had not been able to get out of committee for two years was in there. This was the legislation that made trading in Credit Default Swaps legal and UNREGULATED. These were the instruments that appeared to make risky Collateralized Debt Obligations safe for institutional investors and thus created a huge demand for the high-rate (read sub-Prime loan) CDOs. This spurred demand for high rate bundled mortgages from unscrupulous lenders who 'flipped' the mortgages to Wall Street banks and speculators (who used formulas they didn't understand to incorrectly gauge the risk for such instruments).
The REpublicans animus toward regulation extended to bringing some adult supervision the home loan industry and to Predatory Lenders. The Bush administration used the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 2003 to stop 50 states attorneys General from acting to rein in Predatory Lenders when it was known they were making rediculous, fraudulent loans to people who were not going to be able to pay the balloon rates later).
When Eliot Spitzer tried to go after predatory lenders in court THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WENT TO COURT TO STOP HIM. Thus, a significant cause of the housing bubble - along with, of course, the easy money policy that Greenspan maintained too long to help make a weakening economy look better than it was. This also was a big factor in the wildly inflated housing market.
For the "average" non-wealthy American to put their trust in the Republican party is like asking for a ticket to the gas chambers. Republicans dine on souls of the 'common' people. But, then I guess some people were born to be food for the wolves. (Sometimes people's stupidity makes me feel you almost can't blame the Republicans for their boundless contempt for the 'little' people.) ....I just wish they didn't take those of us who aren't idiots down with them!