This is causing me (and others, including Warren Buffet in GS) some short term losses, but if those losses allow us to create a new, nimbler, more efficient, and smaller Wall Street/banking system, than I think it's a good thing.
I also think it's better to accept some losses now than to accept the long-term political consequences of this bailout, if it would have ended up being costly over the next 5 years (in terms of the government losing massively on quantities of toxic debut). In particular, a tax on trades might have set the industry back 20 years. (If it costs .25% tax to trade, then why not just go back to $125 commissions of the days of old?)
But that's all just my opinion -- neither I nor anyone else probably knows with any measure of certainty the long-term implications of the proposed bailout.