It wasn't insurance that required a bail-out. I think you should read up on the financial crisis - it was mortgage based, not insurance based. If you are talking about AIG - it was the financial end that got into trouble by playing with mortgage securities. There use to be laws about banks being able to play in multiple financial / insurance / commercial buckets to prevent a collapse. But conservatives pushed through "reform" to get rid of that stuff...helped with a business friendly Bill Clinton and G.W.B. that really set this catastrophe up. Our economy is out of recession - that's amazing considering that we came very close to another Great Depression. TARP may have saved us all but yet the public will never see it that way.