Bank Bailouts: Lobbyists for Wall Street

Since January 1, 2008, the United States government has paid more than $204.9 billion in bailout money to the financial services sector.

During the same time, executives in the financial services sector (from the top nine recipients of bailout money) have received more than $32.6 billion in bonuses.

On Main Street, you get a bonus when you succeed. On Wall Street, you get a bonus whether you succeed or fail, even when your failure crashes the United States economy.

The reason for this insanity is that our government has been bought. First Wall Street demanded deregulation, so they could gamble with our economy without any regulatory oversight. (Until the late 90s, more than 90% of the financial instruments traded on Wall Street were subject to oversight and anti-fraud regulations. Beginning with this century, that number fell to 10%.)

Then Wall Street demanded a guarantee that when the gamble went south, we would pay the bill.

Washington gave them both demands, because policy makers in Washington—especially our Congress—can't afford to do anything different. Democrats and Republicans are addicts, dependent upon the campaign cash from these legalized gamblers. And so long as they are dependent, we won't have sensible policies, or a stable economy.