What the hell, Wall Street?

Hokay. Here's how I understand this financial crisis:

A bunch of people wanted to buy houses. They couldn't afford mortgages. But they really wanted those houses! So they applied for loans anyway.

A bunch of fly-by-night lenders approved the loans, either knowing full-well that the borrowers didn't have the income to pay them off, or not even bothering to look into the matter.

A bunch of real banks/lenders bought these loans, not bothering to look into where they came from, who owed the money... Essentially they had to clue what they were buying, and didn't bother to look closely at who was doing the selling.

Lots of these home "owners" couldn't pay off their mortgages. So instead of loans, the banks owned a bunch of houses. Easy enough--just sell them again! There's a housing boom!

... No, there isn't. Not when this many houses are being foreclosed all around. It's pretty much a housing bust. Good luck getting even half of what that loan was worth.

So now all these major banks and lenders are SOL because they didn't bother looking at what they were spending oodles of money on.

But not to worry! The government will bail you out! We love welfare! Especially when it's going to a bunch of rich bankers who should have been smarter than to buy things they had no knowledge of.

So now $5,000 of every American's money is about to go toward these idiots who got themselves into this mess in the first place.

This is essentially what would happen if you took how things ought to work and flipped it upside-down. The free market doesn't work if it gets bailed out every time it makes huge mistakes. This should be a never-work-in-this-town-again situation, not a poor-fannie-mae-we-got-your-back situation. Things are gonna suck for a few years because of this debacle, no matter what, but taxpayers already in up to their ears in military spending shouldn't have to bail out a bunch of huge corporations on top of it.