Ivory marked by the Royal African Company. International Slavery Museum, Liverpool. Wikimedia Commons.
In October 2008 Congress authorized up to $700 billion to stop a collapse of the financial system.
If money is tight, the rescue is not a check to you, and the anger is part of the economic fact.
If you are in the middle, you are asked to back the firms whose failure would hit your job.
If you have savings, the government just became the buyer of last resort for the system you own.
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed on October 3, 2008, created the Troubled Asset Relief Program and authorized up to $700 billion.
Money went to banks, to AIG, and later to the carmakers.
It was described as a rescue of the system, and a great many households experienced it as a rescue of the people who had been paid to know better.
Source: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, signed October 3, 2008.