[humhumhum]

Sorry that I split my answer here, but for some weird reason many educated people I've met said something like this:

> As for “what about schools!” And similar, well the investments in the financial sector which are now paying out can be used in these areas.

No one who says this should be trusted with money in my opinion, I'm sorry. But forgetting about the fact that democratic governments are not businesses and assuming that this is just a profit maximizing activity:

The obvious alternative would have been to take the whole money and inject it directly into the economy across all sectors. Make the grossest simplification: just buy all the DOW stocks. That way the ROI would at least have been somewhere decent. Don't get me wrong, it would still have been an absolute insult to democratic ideals, but hey, at least we would have gotten some cash....

I honestly don't understand how intelligent people come up with this argument... perhaps that says something about me more than about all those people I heard saying this... so really, please, help and educate me on this one, mate.