Six years into the Roosevelt Administration unemployment was over twenty percent. Bailouts take money from the private sector, which has innovative people that create jobs, and gives it to the public sector, which doesn't innovate. The ROI is just not there in a bailout. The counter argument is that the gold standard screwed things up in the Roosevelt era, the rest of the world recovered while the US was still floundering, personally I don't buy that...
Why does history repeat itself? Because what FDR learned was that he could use the bailout money to consolidate political power [buy votes]. I'm sure Obama is going to ensure that large segments of the population continue to vote Democratic while he "sticks it to the man" for them...