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Wall Street's influence pales in comparison to the influence of the American homeowner.

What we have is the result of decades of making owning a home the main way to accrue wealth and then giving homeowners outsized power.

Wall Street is just following the money.

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And yet homeowners got fucked and Wall Street got bailed out. Where was the mythical homeowners' political power when prices were plummeting (in my neck of the woods by 30-50%) and they were threatened with the possibility of foreclosure on an upside-down mortgage?

You're only threatened with foreclosure should you fail to pay your mortgage. Your mortgage being upside-down has nothing to do with it.

Having said that, the major banks shouldn't have got bailed-out either. Smaller banks that were responsible would have had the opportunity to grow when the larger banks faltered due to their bad decisions.

As another commenter here quipped, the first houses Wall Street bought were in Congress.

Perhaps we could say what the goldbugs have been saying for years: it's the money that's the problem.

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