Causing heads to spin, and markets around the world to drop, Congress defied the Beltway consensus and defeated the so-called bailout bill. As the blame game begins one thing is clear: the failure of any kind of leadership — from the White House, Congress, or the Presidential campaigns, no player in this high drama has been able to pull together enough of a majority for action. 

How does that compare to the last similarly big crisis of confidence on Wall Street.  From Wall Street to Main Street to K Street — what’s changed? And what is to be learned from the model of the New Deal.

Danny Schechter, the author of Plunder: Investigating our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal and Frances Fox Piven, the author of many books including Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, discuss the current historical moment.