I'm not entirely sure when America grew envious of its rich, but it seems that's what happened recently. The rich have gone from being icons of the America dream to 'fat cats' creaming off wealth and then expecting special treatment when things go wrong.
I think that it's just bad PR. The rich have always creamed off the top and then expected special treatment when things have gone wrong. It's just that they never did it publically.
So the nation these days is desperate to put a fence between the corporate greed of "Wall St" and the humble goodness of "Main Street". Wall Street made enormous profits, took big bonuses and then went bang. Good - fuck 'em. Bastards.
What we forget is that Main St. demanded that their pensions, their investments and the equity in their houses went up and up. They wanted more than they could afford and took shortcuts to get it. They wanted their chunk of Wall St.
So we blame the dealer and forget the addict. And now we're looking to jail the dealer and leave the addict to go cold turkey. Which will be ugly. Sure there's a thirst for revenge, a determination to punish somebody here. But unless America takes its share of responsibility we're doomed to another cycle of greed and entitlement inflated boom followed by bile spewing bust.