Do the New Math, Less income, less spending, equals a bigger and bigger slice goes toward Interest Payments.

If person A has 1,000 dollars in bills, and 900 dollars in earnings, they must borrow a 100 dollars to break even, and on that 100 dollars they must pay interest. If Person A's income drops to 500 dollars, and they manage to drop their spending to 600 dollars, the net effect is they still must borrow a hundred dollars, but now the percentage of money they are borrowing versus the total amount they are making has DOUBLED.

The government and the banks probably realize that the fastest and most responsible way out of the projected worldwide economic downturn is to stop charging interest to anyone who is responsibly paying down their debts, otherwise, as income and expenses both decrease, the percentage each person is paying towards interest will continue to increase, and continue to strangle the masses.

So the bailout basically took all the money that the consumer lost in home equity, and gave it back to the banks, who in turn will charge interest on it before "sharing" it with the people who it was taken from.