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>> $5 trillion > This sounds like a made up number. What is your source?

$1.3 trillion from two levels of TARP, plus AIG, plus Fannie/Fredy.

The rest has been documented from lost of people who had sustainable mortgages but lost their home due to 9% unemployment that lasted years. There are many sources that cover this. I've read several books on the mortgage crisis and they are all in this category. That is a subset of the $13 trillion referenced in wikipedia sub-prime article.

>> Wall Street over leveragged had huge wealth handed to them in money printing that was giving directly to their balance sheets. > But there were certainly not any "no strings attached" givings of cash to the big financial entities.

You are missing the big robbery. Investment banking firms that purchased the CDOs/MBSs only had 3% of assets backing massive leverage. The reason the financial industry was going to CEASE UP was because they all didn't have the assets to backup the extreme leverage.

The robbery came because extreme money printing (QE) was used to "give assets" to banks so they would have far more than 3% assets to backup their massive leverage. The US tax payer was robbed with the money handed to them to sit on their balance sheets. That is the way their assets backing leverage raised above 3%. Banks getting more than 3% assets didn't happen any other way. Massive inflation will happen when this massive assets flood the market once a bank gets in trouble and transfers these QE "assets" into the market. That is when citizens will get robbed by the huge inflation impact of that QE.