The author seems to focus on the number of bodies/man-hours invested in each startup weekend. These are hardly the most important metrics to consider. One of the main advantages that startup weekends have is that the groups present are self-selected. You couldn't randomly pick an equal number of people off the street and put them through the same program and expect to come up with the same results, because the self-selected group will have motivation that increases their productivity and success rate massively. And on a small scale, this is more likely to be a "successful/unsuccessful" binary scale, e.g. a startup whose founders are 20% as motivated will not create 20% as many jobs; it will in all likelihood create 0 jobs.
What if the American revolutionaries just did startup weekend? You don't fix a corrupt system by hiding your head in a pile of money.
I read this more as being about creating jobs than making money for one's self.
Well it's great that they would be creating more jobs but it wouldn't fix the fact that people got bailed out and then used that money for their bonuses.