You are both correct and incorrect.

The evil ones do not have as much power as most give them.

T.H.E.Y. intend to crash the stock market, and so all the baby boomers are going to be left without pensions, that they thought would leave them quite comfortable.

However, when that happens, there will be a shift in care. Things like, the banks will be charged with fraud and the houses will be paid off. (or something like that) Or, people come together to provide food for the elderly, and all their other bills are stricken from existence, so, all they really need is food. (or something else)

The story template is, T.H.E.Y. try to do something really evil and devastating, but that causes humanity to move very quickly to a new kind of situation/way of doing things. And T.H.E.Y. get seriously destroyed in the process.

And, the shrinking of food supplies will be … there is no good term… well, at the same time, the population will be shrinking because of boomers dying, the VAXXXed dying and natural and unnatural disasters.

Things will work out much better than we can imagine, because many new ways are born out of destruction of the old.