Wall Street and Washington: Partners in Crime?

Former constitutional lawyer and current Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald has an excellent summation of how everything wrong with the Wall Street bailout is in perfectly harmony with all that is so desperately wrong with our government. Here are his 10 points in brief. Read more for a fleshing out of his argument:

(1) Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency.
(2) Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process.
(3) Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions.
(4) The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable.
(5) Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and (therefore) they always win
(6) The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest.
(7) For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government—as it bails them out—isn't doing anything to rein in their practices.
(8) When the Government wants greater and greater power and wants to engage in pure corruption, it need only put the population in extreme fear and it gets its way in every case.
(9) On the most consequential and fundamental questions that define the country, the establishment/leadership of both political parties are in full agreement, and insulate themselves from any political ramifications by acting jointly.
(10) Whenever you think that the Government has done things so extreme that it can't top itself—torture, theories of presidential lawbreaking, a six-year war justified by blatantly false pretenses—it always tops itself.

I think we all know a deal will be struck and a gargantuan bailout is on its way. What is a little encouraging is that the final bill may contain at least a few crumbs of legislation that will benefit the average citizen, rather than simply one giant boondoggle for the filthy rich. Here's a telling quote from Greenwald's post to leave you with:

"Nancy Pelosi's tens of millions of dollars are invested in firms such as AIG, AT&T and others. It only stands to reason—as always—that if Wall St. is both owning the Government and running it, it will prevail over the proverbial "Main Street" every time."