Jim Hightower

Obama and his financial team keep telling us that their Wall Street bailout is all about Main Street – not about the financial elites.

I'm sure you're deeply honored to be at the center of their thoughts, but I can't help noticing that all the money is actually going to those who reside in Wall Street's zip code, not ours. One reason for this might be Larry.

Larry Summers is Obama's lead architect for this multitrillion-dollar bailout. Everyone says he's "brilliant," which I don't doubt. But, brilliant for whom? You see, Larry doesn't live in our zip code, either.

He hails from 10005, the lucrative Wall Street zip code, where he has long put his brilliance to work for those elites. As a treasury official under Bill Clinton, he was an ardent champion of the deregulation scams that subsequently enriched the already-rich, before crashing our economy, and he's been a welcome insider ever since.

Indeed, last year, even as the financial industry was collapsing under the weight of its deregulated greed, Larry was drawing $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street firms and was paid $5 million to be a part-time advisor for one of Wall Street's largest hedge funds, where he specialized in esoteric trading strategies that – guess what? – enriched the rich, usually at our expense.

Larry says he sees no conflict in such coziness. Au contraire, now that he's shaping bailout policy for Obama, he says his Wall Street experience and connections give him special insight. "I have a better sense of how market participants sort of think and react to things," he explains.

That is special, isn't it? Maybe the financial giants are getting all the money, because... well, because Larry thinks like them. Shouldn't Obama find at least one bailout advisor who thinks like we do?