In 2008 we had an approximate total mortgage debt of 11 trillion.
So instead of making Wall St richer we could have taken a few trillion of those dollars and simply payed off a large percentage of those homes. A simple program that would have perhaps identified owner occupants with incomes under say 100k could have had their entire mortgage paid off. Then payoff a smaller amount for some higher incomes. Well I guess it was better to bailout Wall St and keep the majority of the population in debt.