The big short, the housing bubble and the financial crisis

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/15/business/arm3...

Notice the date: 2005. That was around the time I started asking around, "How can I short the housing market?"

I felt relieved reading The Big Short because it revealed that there wasn't any way to do so at the time, especially for a little schmuck like me. And even the guy who eventually figured out how to do it, Michael Burry, ended up fantastically wealthy and, according to Michael Lewis, deeply embittered.

On this article, I agree that trying to treat the Housing Bubble and Financial Crisis as independent events seems disingenuous. (Are there really serious people trying to do this?)

Nevertheless, I question this claim:

We are supposed to feel good about this because it saved us from a Second Great Depression. But there was nothing about the collapse of these banks which would have condemned us to a decade of double-digit unemployment.

I abhor Wall St. and the industrial-finance complex it has created almost as much as any Teapartier or Wall-Street-Occupier. But I don't understand the scenario where those firms collapse and civilization as I know isn't put in, if not serious peril, then unnecessary peril.

"loss of 8 trillion in housing wealth"

Is this true?

How do you create 8 trillion in wealth?

If it was "lost" then who has the 8 trillion now?