If inequality is the problem, we have numerous models around the world for better ways to do things, and the choice at the ballot box couldn't be clearer.
...and if we date the beginnings of the problem back to Reagan-era policies, then it is also very clear that we, as a nation, made a stupid decision and allowed ourselves to be conned into a bad set of policies, which has steadily put us where we are. The problem started at the ballot box in 1980, and the con has only gotten deeper - the teaparty is just the latest version.
The whole "$7.7 trillion in secret loans" is a bit of twisted "fact". There was a sum total of about that during the time when the markets for credit were drying up and many businesses faced imminent bankruptcy due to lack of cash reserves and no available credit. The money was lent to stabilize the markets and prevent bankruptcies, and it worked. It wasn't secret at all - you can find reports, including the round sum totals, from the discussions of what should be done, to the public announcement of the program, to the widely reported progress of things in the economic news as it happened. The loans were mostly overnight, they were all paid back, and the sum in trillions was reached by lending much smaller amounts many thousands of times. You can look at that as a failure of private industry which could have cost millions of jobs, but was effectively managed and stabilized by government intervention.
Inequality is more the issue, which would not have been served at all by a government standing paralytic on the sidelines watching the collapse of the economy that 160 million people here depend on. (That paralysis is what we had in the last months of the bush regime).
Being clear about the issues and voting in their best interests is what people do in other countries that are better governed and more equal than our own. I don't believe there is any magic way out for us, other than following that example.
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