You mistake me - I agree, you're not going to convey much of this was a good idea to people who have a committed notion that we just poured a phenomenal amount of money down a sinkhole. But I think that we can have a useful conversation, even with people with vehemently disagreeing points of view, about what we should do going forward. In particular, when they're proposing an objective (reduce public debt) and a strategy that are in conflict (curtail public income), I think asking which of those objectives is more important to you? is a useful question.

But I neglected to answer your basic question, how to boil the bailout figures down: To keep the entire banking system of the country from going under, and to keep the entire Midwest from going into a much, much more serious depression, we've spent less than $200 per person in the country. That sounds like pretty good value for money.

But I still think it's the wrong argument - it's arguing about how they feel about the past, and those kinds of arguments rarely end well.