[xenadu02]

Republicans controlled Congress during most of Obama's presidency. Congress controls taxes, spending, and most money-related policies. In fact Republicans have been in control for the majority of the past few decades. It was their policies of cutting taxes, gutting government safety nets, "reforming" welfare, gutting banking regulations, and so on that have helped accelerate these trends.

Democrats lost election after election to them and so shifted their policies to match, hoping to chase votes.

Now we don't really have any populist politicians or political parties left.

It seems we are resigned to lurching from panic to panic with anemic growth until we hit the wall of another Great Depression. Then the pain will be so monumental that the 1%'s influence will be swept aside. What form things will take on the other side of that transition no one can say. I also wouldn't hazard a guess on how long it takes; The Panics of 1873, 1893, and 1907 didn't seem to teach anyone any lessons because they repeated the same anti-regulation low-tax "rah rah rah capitalism!" mistakes in the 1920s and triggered the Great Depression. In some ways you could say our systems worked too well to counter-balance the 2007 crisis; they prevented things from getting really bad and forcing change.

[ared38]

Totally agree, we drastically overestimate the power of the President. Congress does most of the things Presidential candidates promise to do, and local government rules everyday quality of life issues like criminal justice and education.