I've been thinking about this bailout thing.  I'm no economist, but it seems to me that instead of the government bailing out large companies that fail, the government should instead work to prevent companies from getting so large that their failure would impact the nation's economy.  So I would suggest that whichever government agency is responsible for regulating corporations start cracking down and don't allow big corporations to gobble up smaller corporations anymore.  (You'd think that's what anti-trust laws would be for.)