We bail out the banks, because bank failures have serious repercussions for the real economy. Banks play heads I win tails you lose with the public and always have. They use to just fail and stick their depositors with their loses but with the introduction of deposit insurance , the tax payers get stuck. Ordinary banks are now regulated so they rarely fail but a unregulated home mortgage industry was developed to allow the game to continue. The loses are larger than just those due to home loan defaults because the securities created were subjects of speculation so some people made a lot of money on the mess. At least one hedge fund manager made 3 billion dollars in commissions which is 20% of what he made for his investors, so that added another 15 billion to the bill the taxpayers.will end up with. The real icing on the cake is that the 3 billion counts as GDP growth and was taxed at the capital gains rate because people need a tax break to provided them with an incentive to grow the economy.

This is much worse than the Savings and Loan scandal. There are more homes being foreclosed on now than during the Great Depression. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, where most of these loans originated, are backed by tax payer money. The best thing to do is to help people to keep their homes by making their loans affordable, but still making them pay for their homes.