I think you need to read some Keynesian economic theory. The fact is there are times when the spending of business and consumers collapse (for a wide variety of reasons). This situation can lead to a depression as the decline in spending is self re-enforcing, I.E. I spend less, you lose your job, you spend less and the next person loses their job. So, having the government at this time use it's credit to borrow can break this cycle just long enough to start a cycle in the reverse direction.

... Do you really think the consumer or BeOS will get a dime of this? ...

Please, anti-trust law is only indirectly about protecting the consumer. Anti-trust law is about protecting the rights of other businesses to compete in a fair and open market. Protecting the consumer is only the hoped for outcome of protecting businesses against a monopoly. The EU is doing what the US government failed to do, which is to rein in the power of a company that was using its monopoly in two markets (desktop OS and desktop productivity software) to a) prevent competition in these markets and b) to allow them to expand into additional markets such as the server OS market.