In Fall, as winter approaches, many cities and towns in North America are blanketed with a thick morning fog, that hides and obscures the main features of the landscape. This fog can be so heavy sometimes that a person wandering about might feel as if only the fog really existed and nothing else.

 

Inevitably, however, the bright sun arises and slowly burns off the layers of mist, and the mountains, trees and rivers reveal themselves for all to see. What was once buried or obscured is now revealed. Nothing can be hidden.

 

Such is the financial crisis that is gripping America and the world. 

 

This crisis has awakened the American people to a level not seen for at least a generation. Indeed, it has brought to the surface deep springs of opposition that hearken back to the great populist and workers’ movements that swept the land in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and even to the American Revolution of 1776 and Thomas Jefferson’s stern warnings against the almighty power of the big banks.

 

While this awakening of the American people is remarkable in itself, other things are also remarkable. How can it be that, when the vast majority of Americans are so bitterly opposed to this bailout of billionaires, their political leadership in Congress keeps trying to shove it down their throats? 

 

The opposition of the people is so strong that some Congressmen have been forced to admit that calls to their offices are 200 to 1 against the bailout. By that reckoning, if Congress truly reflected the will of the people, not one member of the House of Representatives or Senate would be supporting the bailout.

 

Yet the Republican and Democratic party leadership persists in supporting this crude, clumsy, and oh so low, robbery of the public treasury? Is it because they are noble and principled people, who truly believe that the bailout will avoid an economic Armageddon? Or it is something else?

 

It is a fact that, over the last few years, the big banks and financiers have contributed at least $2 billion to U.S. federal election campaigns. This amounts to “a third of all the campaign money that has flowed to the chairmen of the House and Senate committees overseeing the bailout” (USA Today). 

 

For example, Chris Dodd, the Democratic Party Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, and a strong supporter of the bailout, has received a total of $13 million in donations from the banking and financial services industry. Chuck Shumer, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on the Economy (Banking), who also has played a key role in the bailout, has received $12.7 million. And the list goes on and on, and involves many members of both Democratic and Republican parties in Congress.

 

These are the very political representatives who are supposed to be looking out for the public interest in the banking sector. This is deep, deep corruption. Is there any doubt whose side they will be on in any showdown with the big banks or why they persist in promoting this profoundly unpopular bailout? 

 

The presidential elections are no different. Both Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s campaign teams are crawling with lobbyists from the financial sector, and both of them have received millions of dollars of donations. Despite all their rhetoric against Wall Street’s greed and wrongdoing, is there any question where they will stand? Indeed, their assigned role has been to “sweeten” the poison of the bailout with amendments that supposedly favour “Main Street.”

 

The big television and print media corporations are also deeply compromised. Representatives of the Wall Street financiers take up many of the seats on the Boards of Directors of big media. In turn, representatives of big media sit on the boards of the Wall Street financial institutions. Is it any wonder that, with a few exceptions, they are acting as cheerleaders for the bailout? Or that they are downplaying the fierce opposition that is sizzling in the streets and households of America and over the Internet?

 

In the bright light of day, all things are revealed. American politics will never be the same again.