Really? Seems pretty obvious - purchasing assets helps their friends in Goldman and Citibank. Handing out money helps the poors. If you were a fat cat banker, what would you do? This, despite the fact that the utility of money is greater for the poors and the stimulatory effect of giving it to them is greater. But if we do that, we are told, we create "moral hazard" because people will think they don't have to pay their debts. Meanwhile we bail out TBTF banks like there is no tomorrow, moral hazard be damned.

I had vaguely thought that was the reason but I can't seem to find any articles that express that outrage so I thought maybe there was a better reason. Do you know of any? On the other hand, I've found plenty of articles expressing anger at bailing out banks.

There were a ton of editorials in the NYT and WaPo to that effect a decade ago. I'm sure they're still online, but you'd have to dig through all the editorials from 2008-2010 to find them.