Am I a complete idiot?

We all know about the "economic crisis" in the U.S., and the ripple effect it's caused all over the world. Okay, maybe "know" about is a little strong, at least we've all heard about the crisis. It's on the news all day, everyday, with all kinds of charts and graphs and stories and arguments and solutions, blah, blah, blah. But I just don't get it. I don't understand what's happening, why it's happening, or what needs to be done to fix it.

Then I saw this video on several blogs:



The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
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Everyone's going on and on about what a great video it is, how it does a great job of explaing the credit crisis in simple, easy to understand terms, with pictures!
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Yeah, I've watched it 8 times. I still don't get it. It's almost like people are speaking a foreign language. I understand the words they're saying, but I don't know what any of them mean, and when you stringing them all together in sentences, I'm totally lost.

I understand that 10's of 1,000's of people are losing their jobs, 1,000's of people are losing their homes, even people with excellent credit are having difficulties getting loans and credit. But those are just results of the crisis. I have no idea what the actual crisis is, or what started it, or how to fix it. I know about the bail outs, and why people are so angry about them, but why were they necessary in the first place? What would have really happened if the government had done nothing? I know about the Stimulus Package (the main thing I know is that it does not give me a check in my hand! Just a lousy tax break that will basically equal nothing in my hand!) and that some view it as a "pork-laden boondoggle" (that's an actual quote from the Gov. of South Carolina) Am I the only one who's completely clueless about this?
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