When high finance went belly-up in 2008, there were plenty of experts – members of President Obama’s economic council and the head of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank among them – who recommended letting the big banks fail.

Sure, there would be a crisis of confidence in our financial system, a slowdown in the economy, painful adjustments for those most at risk, and more than a few out-of-order ATMs. But eventually – maybe in just a few months – new banks would form and the nation’s financial ship of state would begin to right itself.

Further, from a moral perspective, those who suffered most would be precisely the ones who helped engineer the collapse. This is exactly what Iceland chose to do, by the way, and they’re now being praised for their gutsy stand.

America couldn’t muster the moxie. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had a better idea – namely, flood the market with newly minted dollars, cut interest rates to zero, and force other countries to devalue their currencies, as well, in order to stay competitive in international trade. So for years U.S. banks have borrowed from the Fed for almost nothing while still charging 20 percent on credit cards, and our federal government has gone deeper into debt without increasing the total cost of debt service.

Plus there have been nifty side effects. With interest rates near zero, saving makes no sense so available cash has been driven into the stock market, improving corporate bottom lines, and, in turn, personal IRAs and pension plans. And when foreign investors would no longer buy our low-interest bonds, Ben’s Federal Reserve stepped up and bought them itself.

Pretty slick, right?

And it seems to be working. Stocks are at pre-collapse numbers. There’s been little inflation, at least as the government measures it. Just weeks ago, Japan, the last major market holdout, embarked on a quantitative easing program that’s three-times (measured against GDP) as generous as ours. Heck, the housing market is off life support. Just the other night I heard Jim Cramer, host of CNN’s “Mad Money,” declare that Ben Bernanke deserves way more credit than he’s getting. He’s the same TV host who greeted the country’s initial collapse by screaming into a microphone, “these people know nothing.”

So is Ben a genius, or just lucky?

If you’re a millionaire or better, Ben is your BFF. But none of the trillions he’s fabricated out of thin air has reached Main Street. Sure, a few folks got their mortgages refinanced and autoworkers kept their jobs, but that would have happened anyway. Meanwhile, the world’s banks (that’s right, we bailed out plenty of foreign banks along with our own) got some $1.2 trillion in “loans” from the U.S. Federal Reserve. At the same time – with stunning efficiency – our federal government further improved big bank balance sheets by transferring responsibility for all those upside-down properties to us, the hapless public. We received over a trillion in value, too, but all in red ink.

There are plenty of troubling numbers for the middle class these days. Real income has decreased, along with disposable income. Real wages have stagnated (compare this to the $4.8 billion Goldman Sachs handed out in executive bonuses back in the dark days of 2008, a year they earned only $2.3 billion. Of course they got $10 billion in TARP funds with no restrictions on how it might be used.) The U.S. dollar is being devalued at 7-8 percent annually, guaranteeing you can’t save enough or make enough more to offset the loss in buying power. Taxes are going up, services and safety nets are disappearing, and the nation’s official debt will be $20 trillion plus before Obama is out office. Your share will be north of $200,000.

Ben has a secret. With Obama’s blessing, he’s redistributing wealth on a massive scale. Surprise! He’s pushing it up. Before your kids leave home, or leave college deeply in debt, before you can afford to retire, America will resemble a banana republic. The middle class will become the lower class; the lower class will become a national embarrassment. Just as in any banana republic, a relative handful of people will control the nation’s resources from behind their wall-in mansions patrolled by toothy dogs and armed men in sunglasses. Want a stock tip in Ben’s brave new world? Try the security industry– it’s booming.

And that’s if Ben’s right. If things go according to plan. If he’s wrong, that means China will have convinced the world that their gold-backed Yuan should be recognized as the world’s reserve currency. If that happens, central bankers will flood the market with even more greenbacks than Bernanke printed, likely causing hyperinflation that will destroy the fabled American standard of living. If history is any indication, a deep downward spiral of social chaos will follow.

One thing more: The Federal Reserve System is not part of the U.S. government. That’s right, the Federal Reserve Bank is exactly that, a private bank with a fancy title. It was created and is still controlled by the very folks who plucked the only flower from our fiscal crisis – the too-big-to-fail banks. Their friend, the Fed, is buying U.S. debt despite the fact that it pays peanuts and is backed by nothing. The Fed doesn’t care. They’re not buying paper, they’re buying control over what was once the world’s finest democracy.

Can’t happen here, you say? Wanna bet?

Rick Roberts (reroberts46@yahoo.com) is a veteran of Boston’s advertising community and the US Army. He lives in Windham and is the author of two books: “Digital Darling,” recently awarded Honorable Mention at the New England Book Festival; and the boomer rant, “I Was Much Happier When Everything I Owned Was In The Back Seat Of My Volkswagen.” Both are available through bookstores, Amazon.com, or at BabyBoomerPress.com.