Subject: Dummies' guide to what went wrong in The USA

This is a pretty good way of explaining how it went wrong - not a joke any more though.
Variation on a 2008 theme...

Helga is the proprietor of a bar. She realizes that virtually all of her
customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford
to patronize her bar. To solve this problem she comes up with a new
marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting
the customers' loans). Word gets around about Helga's "drink now, pay
later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of
customers flood into Helga's bar.

Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town. By providing
her customers freedom from immediate payment demands Helga gets no
resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her
prices for wine and beer - the most consumed beverages. Consequently,
Helga's gross sales volumes and paper profits increase massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that
these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases
Helga's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since
he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
He is rewarded with a six figure bonus.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to
make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into
DRINKBONDS. These "securities" are then bundled and traded on
international securities markets. Naive investors don't really
understand that the securities being sold to them as "AA Secured Bonds"
are really debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb and the securities soon
become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading
brokerage houses.
The traders all receive a six figure bonus.

One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager
at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand
payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga's bar. He so
informs Helga.

Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons but, being
unemployed alcoholics, they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since
Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy.
The bar closes and Helga's 11 employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%.

The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and
prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic
activity in the community. The suppliers of Helga's bar had granted her
generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds
in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to
write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of
the bonds.

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family
business that had endured for three generations; her beer supplier is
taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and
lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective
executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings
attached cash infusion from the government.
They all receive six a figure bonus.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on
employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who've never been in Helga's bar.