Feudal Society Part II

And, of course, the owners of the place "own the place"

So: Paese went from Chairman Frank's office to be the top lobbyist at Goldman, and shortly before that, Goldman dispatched Paese's predecessor, close Tom Daschle associate Mark Patterson, to be Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, himself a protege of former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin and a virtually wholly owned subsidiary of the banking industry. That's all part of what Desmond Lachman -- American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief emerging market strategist at Salomon Smith Barney and top IMF official (no socialist he) -- recently described as "Goldman Sachs's seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs."

But Tom Benson told me this morning that we're about to win a bunch of Superbowls so I'm still very hopey.

Update: Inspired by the Greenwald post I just linked to above, and by Mary Landrieu's concern for her "community banks" expressed here, I thought I'd add that Landrieu's top contributor in cycle 2007-2008 was "community banker" JP Morgan Chase.