Wall Street gets it all: Bailouts, bonuses, first dibs on H1N1 vaccine

When it comes to allocating scarce public resources, large corporations seem to have the upper hand in the US. We already know that many powerful companies, particularly the Wall Street investment banks, having gotten plenty of Washington cash. Now it looks like they're getting first dibs on the scarce H1N1 vaccine as well.

If I remember correctly, last fall the problems with the financial sector nearly cratered the global economy -- what with the $30 trillion in lost stock market value and over a trillion dollars in bank write-offs. As I've written before, Wall Street accounts for 0.057 percent of our population, but because it has given $5 billion to Washington politicians and lobbyists over the last decade, the government poured trillions of dollars into bailing it out after its little collapse last year.