l thought that the bailout plan was for Banks that were in trouble and Bank of America is not so why are we handing over money to them?

It was to buy a stake in them so the Feds could be certain that no ''golden parachutes'' were done and that they would not try to take advantage of the depressed real estate market to make a massive profit that did not take into consideration the current owners.

If u r talking about the Treasury is buy-in to major banks last week, the Treasury & the major banks were in an interesting dilemma: If the Treasury offered & a particular bank accepted the bailout money, then it would be a signal to the market (both for stocks & for credit purposes) that the bank was in trouble. Treasury thought that might mean that even banks that needed the money might be reluctant to take it, or that the banks that needed & took the money would suffer more market punishment for it, which is counter to the entire purpose.

So instead, the Treasury strongly encouraged -- a better description might be ''forced although there is a question about whether the Fed can legally force this -- many major banks to accept the help. The end result was that even banks that did not need the help took it, just to provide some ''cover'' for the banks that did need the help.

One could also argue that Bank of America, having acquired Countrywide & then Merrill Lynch, might have its hands full & might not have minded too too much the additional capital.