If the assets and equity are worthless, the taxpayers won't get their money back. The banks were supposed to use that "bailout" money to make loans to people, but they've decided to just sit on it instead. Since the banks don't seem to care about what the government intended for that money, I don't see any reason to expect that we the taxpayers won't get hosed. I will be pleasantly surprised if we don't, but I'm not too hopeful.

On the other hand, Chavez used money that was already in Venezuela's reserves, which one would expect are there for precisely that purpose. Considering the trouble that most of the countries in the world are in at this point in time, I think it's hardly remarkable that a country like Venezuela might dip into their reserves to help tide them over. Do we even have any reserves here in this country, or does all of our money come initially from China these days?