Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has recently warned that the US political system is being dominated by a financial oligarchy, which is distorting economic policy in favour of the banking sector. ("The Quiet Coup")
And Dick Durban, the senior-most Democrat in the US Senate said last month in an interview: "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
Not many people realise that the Federal Reserve is not a part of the US government but that it is a private bank and is owned by other US banks. Americans expect the Fed to work on their behalf but the reality is that the Fed is the most effective tool the banking industry has to serve its interests.
And finally with Goldman Sachs' alumni running the US Treasury (Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Neel Kashkari, Robert Rubin, to name a few), the primary focus of the rescue package has been to not only save the banking sector but use the crisis to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers to the banks.
Thus economy policy is not focused on saving Main Street, but on self-servingly helping Wall Street.
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