Corporations and Big Banks have hijacked the US Economy. (You and I get to pay.)

http://www.alternet.org/economy/herbert-tells-moyers-how-corporations-and-banks-have-hijacked-country?akid=12349.294211.lHrc-K&rd=1&src=newsletter1022673&t=11

Three years ago, reporter and former  New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States to gather research for his new book,  Losing Our Way. In it, Herbert tells the stories of the brave, hard-working men and women he met who have been battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the “virtuous cycle” of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.
He tells Bill: “[W]e’ve established a power structure in which the great corporations and the big banks have allied themselves with the national government and, in many cases, local government to pursue corporate interests and financial interests as opposed to those things that would be in the best interests of ordinary working people… Once you do that, you lose the dynamic that America is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be an egalitarian society, a society of rising standards of living, a society of a vast and thriving middle class.

As for solutions, Herbert says, “People need to start voting against the excessive power of the great moneyed interests. But more than that, we need a movement, a grass-roots movement that will fight for the interests of ordinary men and women…”