It wasn't enough to try to globalise the rest of the world - the caste also decided to globalise the US itself.

Financially the US is now literally two different countries, joined nominally by a federal government which is contiuing to move cash from the real economy into the financial economy because what happens in the financial economy benefits everyone.

Supposedly.

Taxation, regulation, limitation of free capital movement, and reinvestment all have to be tied into a package - ideally with criminal charges for fraud.

But at the moment it's looking more likely that more bailouts will continue to be 'necessary' until bailouts stop being possible, real investment which will be decimated, and profit will be stripmined from the real economy and dumped into useless items like gold bullion.

Capping bonus culture, to the extent that it happens at all, doesn't even begin to address the real issues.

And we're losing the narrative battle again, because while people are angry about the bankers and idealistic about Obama, there's no practical or narrative push-back happening. A bit of sniping on TV from aggressive journalists doesn't count as a sea change - what counts is policy change, and there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of that yet.