treating the public like suckers

no wonder they're out protesting on the streets. A gazillion dollar bailout out to companies that played financial roulette with determined irresponsibility for a decade. What a crock! Handing billions of tax payer (public) dollars over to prop up a system of golden handshakes and short sighted economic policy that clearly aint working (umm, maybe lending money to people who cant pay it back is not a good national strategy, doh) with NO slap on the wrist is just criminal in my book. Finance people are screaming 'socialist bailout' with regard to trying to save the banking sector but there's no social in it when its just giving away public money to cover private debt. The Swedes bailed out their banks in the last decade, BUT they treated it as an investment; they bought that share of the bank and profits thereafter then went back into the public purse, it became a public asset. What's the bet the big boys at the top still get their multi-million dollar packages and bonus pay. This is what gets me. Economic liberals always demand the market knows how to regulate itself. So, clearly, here the market is saing 'whoooa', cant be living high on the hog like this, all this debt is drowning us', and the market 'fails', as it should. BUT, the government steps in and props up the market??? when the market is merely correcting itself according to its own rules. The hypocracy really pisses me off; the public pays and the shareholders benefit.