No change on Wall Street - 3? No, Big Change

I must amend (only slightly) the thesis that Wall Street is not mending its way. It is mending in a way that would make your jaws drop.

The latest report indicates a very big change is coming. Wall Street is going to change Washington. Read here.

If I knew my Wall Street smarts, plus the history of lobbies in DC, Wall Street will take DC -- through it, the taxpayers -- to the cleaners.

One paragraph caught my attention in particular. It provides a perspective of how much $$ US taxpayers had already shelled out to save Wall Street, or I should say, the small number of "masters of universe": -

..."Three times as much U.S. taxpayer money has gone into propping up a single firm, insurance giant American International Group, as the world spent a decade ago during the financial rescue of South Korea, then the world's 11th-largest economy. And the emergency bailout of financial firms that Congress approved last year has cost nearly as much as the first five years of the war in Iraq."...

To refresh your memory, a significant chunk of AIG rescue money went straight to Goldman Sachs to settle an AIG payable to that princely firm whose ex Chairman was the US Treasury Secretary when the AIG money was being handed out.

OK, mark me cynical. But fact is fact.