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The fundamental, bottom-of-the-pile problem is that political campaigns are paid for by businesses. As long as that is true, there cannot be sustainable political will to carefully regulate Wall Street, because Wall Street will provide an endless source of lobbying funds to avoid that outcome. Who will outspend whom, the people who lend trillions of dollars in the aggregate, or reform nonprofits and individual economists?
Campaign finance reform pretty much has to be the cornerstone and first step of any plan to turn things around in this country. I don't say the influence of business can be completely eliminated, but it needs to be mightily frustrated for our democracy to heal itself.
