monaghan: Wall Street controls the federal government -- particularly the SEC and Justice Department -- through the revolving door. People in the SEC get a high-paying job at a white shoes law firm in payment for getting one of the firm's crooked clients off the hook. The same kind of thing works with other agencies such as the FTC and FCC.

When a top lawyer or banker leaves the company to go into government, the former employer keeps his or her pay at the same private sector level, knowing that he or she will return after corrupting government.

A classic example of Wall Street's control of Congress is going on now. Citigroup slipped into the spending bill (which has to pass lest the government close down) the most noxious proposed legislation I have seen in a long time. If the bill passes the Senate as it was written in the House, the big banks will be able to gamble on derivatives with money from the Fed, and will get a bailout from taxpayers if their gambling goes south.

Dodd-Frank had eliminated this: a bank now has to put its derivatives trading in a separate entity that cannot be bailed out by taxpayers. But the banks slipped this in at the last minute so we can do a rerun of 2008/2009 -- you and I paying for the banks' bad bets.

In his desire to get the spending bill through, Obama wants this abominable provision to remain in the bill. He lobbied the House to get Democrats to vote for it. Most didn't, but enough did that it passed. You will be swindled by a provision buried in a huge bill. That's how Wall Street controls the government.

And Wall Street and solons claim they believe in capitalism. Best, Don Bauder

Twister: I have been writing for decades that the nation spends more money on corporate welfare than on social welfare. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, many people disagreed with me. After the bank bailouts, I don't get arguments anymore. Best, Don Bauder