There were two good options, one of which was discussed by shouted down, and one that was barely discussed and shouted down even harder.

1. The US could have nationalized the banks and institutions that were failing. Get rid of the management that caused the failure and/or charge them with fraud. Then after things have stabilized, break up the banks and reprivitize them, break them up and leave them nationalized, or liquidate them. Iceland followed a path like this to great success.

2. Bail out the homeowners instead of or in addition to the banks. The bad loans had two parties, the lenders (the big banks) and the homeowners who were defaulting on those loans. The US could have taken over all those loans and then reorganized them so that only clear speculators lost their homes.

This second plan would have solved multiple problems facing the US today, but Wall Street and VC - who got Obama elected - would not have made a killing off the 2008 meltdown that Wall Street caused, so it was very unlikely.