Is the Bear Stearns Rescue "Worth-It"?

Past week has been a little hectic and I did try to listen to justifications and the explanations given by Dr. Bernanke on this and others. While a lot of the discussion was about .. what the fed knew, when it knew and whether they acted appropriately and with-in their rights, a fundamental question that just seems to have gone un-answered is whether the Bear Stearns Rescue is/was going to be "worth" the tax payer money being put in. There are 2 main reasons for this question:

1. Consumer is tapped out, do you want to tap out the tax payer completely with no return.
2. Tax payer is currently looking at some systemic failures such as social security, medicare and is also a class of "vulture" investors constantly on the look out for distressed assets.

In trying to determine the true return for the tax-payer, there seems to be little mention except that it is expected that the tax payer will not lose money and that JP Morgan will take the first $1billion loss first and then the tax payer takes up to $30 billion. What about profit? How does the tax payer benefit if JP Morgan makes a wind-fall profit from the "distressed" assets of Bear Stearns? There seems to be absolutely no provision to the up-side for the tax payer and significant share to the downside (1:30) . The real "worth" in the deal just does not seem to be visible and probably the only consolation the tax payers will have to live with is that the Fed prevented a broader meltdown (which may or may not have been good for the tax payer).

All in all it's now a question of whether the tax payer will lose money and if so how much on this deal but the idea of making money... we'll leave that to Jamie Dimon!