It's the natural order of things!

Judith: How could some bad mortgages cause the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?

Steve: People lost confidence in American banks once they learned they were loaning money to poor people.

Judith: But the bankers who caused this got rich. Richard Fuld made $500 million in the eight years before Lehman collapsed. Stanley O'Neal received a $161 million severance for driving Merrill Lynch off a cliff. Is this fair?

Steve: You must provide financial executives with big incentives to entice them to loan to the poor. A banker's natural inclination is to say, "Screw the poor."

Judith: How can we solve the crisis?

Steve: By getting money back where it belongs.

Steve: With the rich.

Judith: How do we get more money to the rich?

Steve: Usually we can rely on unregulated markets to funnel money to the rich. However, in times of economic crisis when free markets fail, the government must step in.