Were you working for the same bank 14 years ago? That would be an impressive sort of consistency. I think maybe not, however, because if you had been there your two-sentence synopsis wouldn't be quite so muddled. Did your bank hold assets the book values of which decreased in response to the events of 2007-8, or did its liabilities increase unexpectedly for the same reason? In that case, your bank was hurt directly. Otherwise, it wasn't hurt. Has anyone ever had to be "forced" to purchase anything for "pennies on the dollar"? Usually we are eager to purchase at 90% discounts. It's almost as if the story your bank tells its new employees is modeled after the story we all got. IME, when bankers don't make sense, they're lying.

Over most of USA history, both parties active at any particular time serve the interests of capital. There are occasional exceptions (e.g. FDR), but now is not such an exception. It's silly to emphasize the difference between parties, but if we must do so the past two decades in which control of Congress and the presidency has passed back and forth are something of an anomaly. Before Bush the Lesser, the last time Republicans were in any sense "dominant" was under Hoover. The Democrats held the House for twenty consecutive Congressional sessions.

If the stories you've been told, about your bank or about the USA political system or about anything else, don't make sense, then consider the possibility that those stories simply aren't true.