The biggest money problem of all

The biggest money problem of all

by digby

Here’s my latest primal scream, posted over at MoJo:

Sometimes I wonder if amidst all of our world-weary cynicism we are even cynical enough. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the immensity of the problem of money in politics, but it’s this part of it that still shocks and depresses me. Thomas Edsall wrote this column earlier this week:

Four years after the 2008 collapse, the finance industry has regained its dominant position in American politics. Perhaps the development of deepest significance is an absence: the failure of a powerful anti-Wall Street faction to emerge in either the House or the Senate. This is in contrast to the response to previous financial crises, when Congress enacted tough legislation—after the Savings and Loan implosion of the 1980s, for example, and more recently after the bankruptcy of Enron and WorldCom in the early 2000s.

Look at the current political environment this way: if Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Romney-supporting super PAC Restore Our Future were a public company, the financial services industry would have a controlling interest. President Obama, in turn, has been noticeably cautious in his critique of Wall Street, trying instead to focus on Romney’s former company, Bain Capital. Obama’s ambivalence about speaking out is a tacit victory for the industry.

Indeed it is. And you can see the results of such far-reaching influence when you read this amazing piece by Matt Taibbi.

Read on …

It goes on to discuss the Grand Bargain, “tax reform” and the inevitability of average Americans getting screwed if they do it.Very uplifting. It’ll brighten your day.

Here’s Taibbi on Spitzer’s show last night:

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