Citi is about to be bailed out while GM is allowed to languish. That’s because Wall Street’s self-serving view of the unique role of financial institutions is mirrored in the two agencies that run the American economy — the Treasury and the Fed. Their job, as they see it, is to keep the financial economy “sound,” by which they mean keeping Wall Street’s own investors and creditors reasonably happy.

Because the public doesn’t understand the intricacies of finance, it’s easily persuaded that this is definition of “soundness” is the same as keeping savings flowing to the banks so that the banks can lend to them to Main Street. That’s why the public and its representatives have committed $700 billion of taxpayer money to Wall Street and another $500 to $600 billion of subsidized loans to the Street from the Fed — bailing out the investors and creditors of every major bank, including , any moment, Citi — only to discover, at the end of this frantic and unbelievably expensive exercise, that American jobs and communities are more endangered than they were at the start.

Obama, as FDR did in 1932, is having none of that.

that’s not what i looks like to me so far. obama pushed paulson’s wall street bailout and the person he’s chosen to replace paulson is at least not a GS clone, but seems ideologically not much different.