Financial Crisis 101

In order to start fixing the financial problems plaguing the country, the U.S. government has proposed a $700 billion bailout plan. "People were phoning their congressmen and congresswomen saying, 'We don't want you bailing out these fat cats,' because the perception was we were helping all these guys on Wall Street and they were going to get richer and richer even though they'd done all of this to us," Oprah says. "But it's really all of us who are going to be affected." 

Ali says that if the bailout doesn't get passed, credit will get even tighter and more jobs will be lost. "Inadvertently, we're going to have to help Wall Street to get the money trickling down to you, because that's the system through which money flows," he says. "But there's a real reason to be angry."

Still, the task at hand should be to fix the problem instead of wasting time blaming Wall Street, Ali says. "The bottom line is it's like your 3-year-old has set fire to your curtain, and you're having a conversation about whether 3-year-olds should have matches or whether your kid's a brat," he says. "Put the fire out, and have the conversation with your kid later. That's the situation that we're in right now. The fire is going to consume your house if it does not get put out."