A parable about what a crisis is
One day a merchant appeared in the village and announced to the inhabitants that he would buy monkeys from them for 10 dollars. The villagers, seeing how many monkeys there were in the jungle, abandoned their plots and began to catch monkeys. The trader bought thousands of monkeys for ten dollars each, but the number of monkeys began to dwindle and it became increasingly difficult to catch them.
Then the merchant raised the reward for catching each monkey to 20 dollars. And the people began to catch monkeys again. Soon the food in the village became scarce, and the villagers slowly returned to their fields. The trader raised the price to 50 dollars. However, he needed to go to town on his own business and left an assistant in his place.
The deputy gathered all the villagers and offered them a deal: Look at all these cages with thousands of monkeys you've already caught. I'm willing to sell them to you for only $35, and when the dealer comes back, you'll sell them to him for $50 apiece.!
The villagers thought and counted, then pooled their savings, racked up debts, and bought up all the monkeys for $700 billion. After that, they never saw the salesman and his assistant again. But they were left with large debts and monkeys they didn't need.
Now do you understand how the Wall Street bailout plan will work?