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That's basically how it was explained to me by my son who has done quite a bit of studying on the causes of the crash that has apparently been a ticking bomb for a decade or more.

I began hearing about the sub-prime lending practice by large banks and financial institutions many months or maybe a year or more ago, but my adviser at Fidelity where our IRAs are invested has never mentioned investing in anything like that, so at the time I didn't think it would ever involve me. But now it appears that it will negatively affect practically everyone in the US and around the developed world whether they have money invested or not.

It only makes sense that if fiscal irresponsibility is involved in anything to do with government and money the Congressional Democrats would be squarely in the middle of it, all the while blaming the evil Repubs (many of whom are probably more dumb than evil) for their own mistakes and subsequent failures to do the right things to correct them.

I'm basically a drooling moron on financial matters, but my neighbor and good friend is a multi-millionaire retired former business owner. Of course he has far more money invested in various funds than I ever dreamed of having, so he has studied the country's banking and overall financial system extensively and understands it much better than I ever will. Last week we talked about the bailout and why he thinks it's a very bad idea that will rip off the taxpayers and let the bankers off scot free. Armed with that information I gave my brother in law an illustration of the bailout that uses a hypothetical car sale for an example that even I can easily comprehend without taking a community college night school course in economics. To wit;

Joe Shmo wants to buy a $100K Mercedes that he can't afford, but a local banker finances the full price and the Merc seller pads the invoice price a few thousand bucks so Joe will have some spending money to go along with his snazzy new Merc. Joe would then be in somewhat the same situation as a typical sub-prime mortgagee.

Then 6 months later when Joe is flat broke and 3 months in arrears the banker calls the town's half wit mayor and asks him to take money out of the town's pothole repair fund and pay off the auto loan that he, the banker, gave Joe and now Joe can't pay back. So the half wit mayor does as he is asked, the town's tax paying citizens end up paying the bank for Joe's Merc and pocket money, and the half wit mayor borrows money from an out of town bank to fill potholes.

In the end, every one in town loses but the car dealer, the banker, and Joe, who has a snazzy Merc cost free except for the first 3 payments.

Does that illustration of the bailout sound reasonable to you? If not don't spend any time or effort trying to explain where the difference is. If I can't understand the relatively simple bailout and illustrate it for my BIL, I doubt that I will ever understand the even bigger problems in the world economy any better than I do now.