Well, if our starting point is just to help capital ride out a crisis, then – as someone may have once said – capitalism can always survive its crises by making the working class pay for them. Such a starting point is contrary to our interests, which is to ensure that we are not made to pay for a crisis that we did nothing to create. And the trouble with these interventions is that they do, all too often, come down to making us pay for their crisis. For example: contrary to what this nitwit claims, the US isn’t just ‘lending’ some money to the nice bankers so that they can get our economy working again. Not even the establishment US newspapers try to sell that line. The US has bought up a lot of toxic debt, and – even on optimistic assumptions about future US economic growth (not shared by the better pro-capitalist economists) – American taxpayers are unlikely to see a lot of that money again. It is indeed just bailing out the banks, with no reciprocity and only minimal accountability. When critics, many of them well-placed to comment on the topic, pointed out the many flaws in the proposals, they were told that there would be a severe systemic meltdown and that there was no time for all this partisan squabbling – it was a lie, but then urgency is the currency of all ransom notes. Pay up, or else. Similarly, most of the money given to Northern Rock will never be seen again. The government may make a small profit compared to the much-diminished purchase price, (again, this depends on one being bullish about the prospects for the UK and global economy), but it won’t make up for the lost billions. And what the government actually retained from Bradford and Bingley consisted of risky buy-to-let mortgages, so it is possible that the treasury will make a loss on this. It has effectively privatised the solid branch banking and savings infrastructure that Santander was eager to have and socialised the component that relates to a contracting market (buy-to-let).
i really like that highlighted line.
doop HQ 
This whole thing reminds me of the Kevin Bacon, fraternity, paddling scene in Animal House. The American public is being bent over and is saying, “Yes sir, may I have another!?”