In his letter to Obama, Paul Krugman makes this excellent point:

You can also do well by doing good. The Americans hit hardest by the slump — the long-term unemployed, families without health insurance — are also the Americans most likely to spend any aid they receive, and thereby help sustain the economy as a whole. So aid to the distressed — enhanced unemployment insurance, food stamps, health-insurance subsidies — is both the fair thing to do and a desirable part of your short-term economic plan.

Even if you do all this, however, it won't be enough to offset the awesome slump in private spending. So yes, it also makes sense to cut taxes on a temporary basis. The tax cuts should go primarily to lower- and middle-income Americans — again, both because that's the fair thing to do, and because they're more likely to spend their windfall than the affluent. The tax break for working families you outlined in your campaign plan looks like a reasonable vehicle.

At this stage of things it is foolish to give money to the rich (to banks) for this reason alone: they have turned into what Marx called "capitalists gone mad"—meaning, they have become misers. They will not supply this type of economic system the fresh investments it needs to function and survive. The rich are in hoarding mode. The poor, on the other hand, know nothing about hording. They can only spend, throw money back into circulation. And circulation is capitalism in its essence. With the poor, the commodities and money circuit knows no rest (C-M-C-M-C); with the rich, the M-C-M circuit that distinguishes them (separates them from the poor and the middle class) has been shutdown or blocked. At this stage, even socialism of food stamps help the economy, because the poor are the last sane capitalists in town.