It was far more dystopian than all that.

So Obama pushes through tarp. 443.5 billion dollars are moved from the public trust to 1%er CEOs. The CEOs promise trickle down. The CEOs don't deliver trickle down. As a show of gratitude, they SLOW THE INCREASE of profit margins, they do not LOWER PROFIT MARGINS in an act of trickle down. They pocket the 443.5 billion real dollars that were collected from common people via taxes.

Obama then asks for the 443.5 to be repaid, but sure as shit, those 443.5 billion dollars are not leaving 1%er pockets.

The CEOs go to big banks and say "I owe Obama 100 billion dollars. Would you value my company at 100 billion dollars, create an unsecured equity security (the oxymoron, unsecured security, amirite?) and give me 100 billion dollars to give to Obama."

The bank CEO says "Absolutely. I will take 100 billion real dollars that people have put into this bank as savings and give those dollars to you, so you can give them to Obama, and in exchange, I will have this abstract imaginary unsecured equity that says you owe me 100 billion dollars, and I will let you do that because IF I ever enforce repayment, in theory, you can sell your company for 100 billion dollars. I don't plan to ever enforce repayment (favors among 1%s and all), and if I did, you could file bankruptcy and since the equity is unsecured, it would probably be discharged, in which case the 100 billion fake dollars I 'have' disappear into smoke, so if there comes a day that all of the people at my bank want to withdraw their savings, that money simply will not exist anymore and they will be told 'tough shit' while I jump on a private jet to Aruba Enron style."

So to simplify it: Americans paid for the money to be given to the CEOs through public trust, then Americans paid for money to be given to the Federal government through private banking institutions.

It was all a giant money laundering scheme that enriched the 1%ers, kept the Federal Government at the same level, and cost the American people 887 billion dollars. Interest rates go up, everyone gets bled more aggressively by their debt, banks and CEOs get ballsier about how hard they can fuck the American people with impunity.