Banks, of course, were among the big contributors to the Bush campaign. It's payback time for campaign funds. Favors beget more favors. No industry is going to overlook the special treatment bestowed on another. As Robert Reich, former labor secretary under the Clinton administration, pointed out in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, no one is left to stem the flow.
Business is in complete control of the machinery of government.
If corporate America understood its long-term interest, it would use this unique moment to establish in the public's mind the principle that business can be trusted. But it's doing the opposite, and the danger for American business as a whole is profound. Both have added a handful of zeroes to their Clinton era balance sheet dreams. Cheney has an energy team that's set to revive nuclear power, while Cheney-Bush have a geological survey map of Alaska on the Oval Office coffee table with the oil patches marked in green, dollar green. The defense industry is cranking up the lobby efforts for revival of B-2 bomber production and cargo plane rollouts.