$700 Billion

Would someone please tell me why I should support the bailout of the banking industry. Although my marginal contribution would be relatively small (~$2000, assuming 350 million people in the USA and $700 billion in bailouts), I feel very put out by this. My heart-felt belief is that government should only exert its influence over issues of market failure. In this case, the market is not failing, it is correcting itself. It will be painful because businesses will fail. So what! Businesses fail, even big ones. This is exacerbated when they pursue strategies that are high risk, with high profit potentials. They give dividends to their shareholders in the best of times and are now asking the taxpayer to shoulder the burden of their poor decisions. Get real!

The prominent argument is that the taxpayer will pay for this either way. One one hand, these failures will slow the economy and thus hurt employment, capital investment, and the flow of money in the economy. On the other hand, the taxpayer can keep the economy going (the speed of recovery is still indeterminate given the bailout) by digging into government resources, their taxes and programs, and bailing out companies with problems. The assumption is that keeping these companies around will benefit the public broadly.

Maybe I don't worry so much about a complete economic stall because my position is least likely to be impacted (a tenure-track job at a union dominated school) and I have never really endured one.

I have a few alternate economic bailout plans...
1) we give each individual in the USA the $2000 dollars that we would have given to the banks in the bailout plan. They will most certainly reinject it into the economy at a blazing pace.
2) we use the $700 billion dollars to forgive all student loan debt. Thus we free up interest payments from the debtors to banks that they will use to stimulate the economy.
3) we take the $700 billion dollars and pay off a portion of the national debt. Then we take the money that we would have spent on that interest and create temporary government jobs like the CCC of the New Deal.
I am sure that there are better ideas out there...

I have one overwhelming question that lingers. Why, when corporations need $700 billion, the government has it, but when we need better schools, roads, or welfare programs it doesn't?

update:
According to this article in the NYTimes, it really isn't $700 billion lost. The government would buy the bad assets and then sell them for a loss. In real terms Johnny Slick who sold their house in 2004 got $435k, it is now worth $190k because of market deflation and foreclosure, the government buys it for the $435k that the bank paid, the government sells it for $190k. Who wins in this deal? Johnny Slick, the bank, and the purchaser of the house at $190k (also a person with good credit). Who loses? the taxpayers. They just paid Johnny Slick all of his profit and the bank $145k (albeit that gross cost to the taxpayer is only Johnny Slicks profit because the bank gets paid $0 when it should have lost $145k).