It's not a screw-up, this is how it's supposed to work.
I'll put it in very blunt terms: If you know the right people, you don't even have to be rich to have real influence in this country. You can just go billions, even trillions of dollars into debt and then have everyone keep you afloat because they don't want to go down with you. That's really what the bailouts were all about in the final analysis.
If that's not bad enough, quadrillions of dollars worth of derivatives, swaps, and other exotic financial instruments have been created by the large money center banks, values that are not based on reality, or real world assets. The banks are reluctant to admit to the massive losses on their books, as doing so will mean them acknowledging their bankruptcy. Now the banks are using cheap Federal Reserve credits meant to keep them afloat to buy up assets; ports, roads, medium cap corporations, practically anything they can extract rent from, at pennies to the dollar. Money that is flowing into their coffers isn't being re-invested back into the economy, hence the slow growth and continued high unemployment, even in the midst of strong bull market.
Their aim is to concentrate as much wealth as possible in the fewest hands. That is the ultimate aim of a financial collapse that was manufactured. It's no mistake, it's deliberate.