"[W]e were effective in passing health-care reform, which the health insurance industry wanted to stop; Wall Street reform, which Wall Street wanted to stop"

Ok, so I'm in grad school and thus spend a lot of time reading about 13th century British politics and seem to have significantly misunderstood large parts of recent American policy and political reality. Will someone please explain a few things to me?

From what I understand, a bunch of bank/insurance/what they call "Wall Street" people fucked a lot of shit up really badly. And they almost had to fold up and quit. But in reality if they all disappeared, America's economy would go down the toilet, taking most of the rest of the world with them. And everything would be terrible, wolves would run through the suburbs, nobody would be employed, and it would generally be mad-max-esque. So the government was like, "Hey that's really bad, here's a bunch of billion dollars that you can have to fix this, and even though you all fucked up we're going to BAIL YOU OUT because if you are not bailed out then the world will crumble."

So then the Wall Street people were like, "Ok awesome, thanks," and used that money to someone fix the debt that they had somehow created—I am not sure how they created debt, because it seems like they made imaginary money and since money is actual and not representative like, say, numbers, I don't understand how you can have not-real money and use it like it's real, while I can understand that the square root of -1 is imaginary because -1 is not a real thing that I can put in my pocket. But anyway. They used that money to fix the debt, more or less.

But then there is still lots of debt and lots of people who had 401Ks whose worth plummeted after this crash that required the bailout, they still haven't regained their money/retirement funds, and my partner's parents are going to have to work until they're really really old because they no longer have money to retire on.

But also the Wall Street People who fucked up with the imaginary money and got bailed out by the government attempting to prevent an apocalypse, they all got million-dollar bonus checks. And so the people at [banks that fucked up] have no debt and lots of money, and [regular people who got fucked by the banks and who lost their money in the crash] still do have lots of debt and no money and no bailout.

Why would Wall Street be against this plan? Why was this a plan that Republicans were against? Why was this a plan that anyone thought was a good idea? Why weren't the people who did all the shit that made the economy start to collapse in the first place sent to jail?

Why should I be pleased with this government when this is the solution they came up with? Am I misunderstanding the way the bailout worked? Is this related to or separate from what Pelosi says Wall Street was against?

Because it really, really sounds like the government of a fictional country or planet in a not-really-believable-because-it's-so-incompetent-and-also-evil science fiction/fantasy novel. And I think I'm misunderstanding something. Because I cannot be living in a science fiction story.

#iamkindadumb

#governmentishard

#pelosididgood?

#questions

#explaintheworldtomeplease

#isthisreallife