The entire US financial system is based on credit and liquidity. Clearly something had to be done. Do I agree that the bailout was the best way to do that? No. But a timely bad plan was better than an untimely good one.
By the way, the argument that nothing needed to be done is opposed to practically every economics departments' opinion in the country. Maybe you know more about economics than we all guessed, but I think it's time you show a PhD instead of arm-chairing here.
The something that clearly needed to be done was to make the perpetrators pay for the damages of their crimes, not the victims. If the US financial system collapsed, there would be a deflationary shock and the short term high unemployment associated with an economic realignment, but the country would be much healthier financially in the long term. Instead the crisis is simply being dragged out, with the inevitable day of reckoning certain to be much worse because of it.
The amount of money the US has pumped into its corrupt financial system is enough to put its entire population on welfare for years. A sane approach would have been to let the banks fail, let the markets tank, and ease the transition as needed with bottom-up debt relief and aid.
By the way, the argument that nothing needed to be done is opposed to practically every economics departments' opinion in the country. Maybe you know more about economics than we all guessed, but I think it's time you show a PhD instead of arm-chairing here.