On Jan 2 of 2008 Dominick Armentano published a prediction on Mises.org for a big recession in 2008. He blamed it on the Subprime crisis, accounting rules like the Sarbanes-Oxley mandated mark-to-market that forced companies to write down loan portfolios to fire-sale prices, the sky-high price of gas, and the devaluation of the dollar caused by loose money since 2003. Add in secondary effects like the effect of the negative savings rate that has been financed by home equity loans and we had a perfect storm.

This is a pretty good primer about the bailout including the theory to understand it, how it happened, historical precedents, what will happen next, and how to solve it.