One of my main grievances with the Wall Street bailout is how the banks aren’t being held accountable for their mistakes (and the hallway conversations and murmurings tell me others are bothered by this, too.) To put this in perspective, what if every American said to the government “Pay off my credit card debt, car loan, and mortgage or I’ll kill myself tomorrow.” Would the American government absorb our words and fork over billions to save us all? Not a chance. But that’s essentially what Wall Street did. They held a gun to America’s head and told Congress to fork over the dough. By exploiting the world’s fear of a market collapse, the irresponsible banks strong-armed their way into a deal which has, so far, lived up to little of what it promised. Where’s the liquidity? Where’s the oversight?

These banks were suffering because they took on debt they couldn’t afford. What’s the difference between those banks and the millions of Americans suffering because of similar irresponsible decisions? From a purely situational perspective, not a thing. It’s the level of accountability, however, that most Americans have that draws a distinct line between them and the financial robber barons. It’s true that millions of people in this country live off the welfare system, but those millions are overshadowed by a larger majority who accept their irresponsibility as their own and take personal accountability for their actions. Rather than make others suffer for their mistakes, they choose to cut back on spending and trim down their life styles. Even while wishing the opposite, they understand government won’t be there to bail them out because that isn’t the government’s job.

Yet somehow, in a country for the people, an accountability asymmetry has emerged. We could all stand up tomorrow and, as Wall Street did, threaten to derail the domestic and global economy if our demands aren’t met. But we wouldn’t. We don’t operate as if our government is a soup kitchen, and our corporations shouldn’t either. We do not share their profits and they should not share ours. Our government pitifully acquiesced. They made a mistake. This bailout is a slap to the face of hard-working Americans who struggle each day to climb out of the holes they made for themselves. And you know how they learned to climb? Out of necessity.

Given the bailout, our financial industry will remain unaccountable for its actions. They pulled one over on us. They got us to sacrifice our ideals and our money in the face of a threat that has yet to actualize. What happened in September was the pièce de résistance of eight years of fear mongering and an utter failure of our political system. What an immense disappointment.

Americans have a right to be outraged and dammit we should be.