I disagree on this, as a bad assumption, and lack of explaining the whole. I don't hate you at all, I just feel as though you are missing the point.
Here is where I stand with this.
While the economic package wasn't pretty, clean, or well organized, or popular, it sure was better than not passing it all. During the failure of Goldman Sachs, the Lehman Brothers, the bursting housing bubble, and the increasing subprime mortgage crisis, things were not looking good for the banking industry or wall street. The failure of these large-scale banks and businesses were the first in what would've been a catastrophic failure of America's financial system, which in turn would cause huge repercussions around world trading and finance markets.
Why? Well as I have read, (from The Economist Weekly, The World is flat, and the New York Times), most large-scale investing is done globally, on an intertwining mix of business, banks, and other financial institutions. Sometimes, as the case was for the Wall Street Corporations, these relationships would become tightly woven and heavily linked. The problem for this was that in the event that one of the partners failed, the other(s) were at a high risk of failure as well, depending on what is at stake. Why do this? Better return rates, decreased overhead, less fees, etc.
So this is pretty much what many of the large corporations bought into. Their motivation for better business eventually turned into greed, which les the Subprime mortgage crisis. I wont get into that now. Basically the phrase, "To Big to Fail" came out of this. Sound familiar huh?
At the time when many of these large corporations started teetering on the edge, the Federal Reserve System (FRS) and Ben Bernanke saw that these institutions were so heavily intertwined with many other large and far-reaching institutions, they realized the problem that would result of it. Since Ben Bernanke pretty much is the head of the FRS, it was pretty much his call. A good call indeed. If the FRS had not bailed out the key financial institutions, the American Economy could've gotten a LOT worse, essentially the collapse of America's economy could've happened as a result.
Why no approval from congress on the original bailout? No time was available for blabbering politicians to figure out finance. It was better for the Fed to do it without congressional approval at the time.
So hence, the initial Bailout of the Federal reserve System was justified, legal, and vital.
Now the extra additions to the bailout fund, (the federal stimulus package if you will), were not exactly good either. The whole purpose was to pump enough money into the American Economy to continue to keep it stable and not plunge even further down the hole. The original bailout saved the Economy in the short-term, but the longer term needed more money to keep the stability. Now these follow-up funds were not always the best managed due to the need for passing congress's approval. I'm sure you can figure that one out with ease. Regardless the stimulus did it's job by keeping the economy "stable" and not getting worse. Politicians claim job creation out of the stimulus package, but all I see is that they are trying to use it as a political tool, for whichever side of the argument they are on.
As for the unemployment? I see it as that it only increased to 10% through this whole crisis. I'm thankful that it never got worse, and I pray that it doesn't. Granted the 8% plan was never met, but the plan as whole kept it from getting much worse.
Whatever is happening now with the sluggish economy cannot be blamed on the Stimulus package for a fault. Blame lack of investment from markets, and lack of consumer demand. That whole economic cycle is heavily intertwined with the banking system and all of this, but it is a large machine and takes time to alter, unless plunging into a recession or depression. We just need improved investing confidence, a higher demand for consumption, as well as a government with a balance spending and income sheet. That's something else though.
