The furor of the “bonus” is about the absence of political will. Our Congress is spending an outsized share of its governing & now legislative energy to beat the dead horse of bonuses, planes and other bad habits of the executive leadership of failed industries. But it will not spend similar amounts of time and energy developing incisive legislation and reform for banking.

Send the bonus & plane sinners to Alcatraz and be finished with them. They’re not what’s in the way of economic rescue and recovery. The glaring lack of informed and decisive leadership in Congress, as well as the White House, is. There is no understanding that someone has to be willing not to be liked by the angry mob of society, in order to do the things necessary to reestablish order and security in our national system of finance and its markets.

The Treasury, the council of wizards known as the President’s Economic Advisers, with its handpicked best-of-breed, hyper-credentialed do-nothings and the Congressional committees on banking have all been chasing the populist demons of bonuses and its sibling outrages, like rabbits. With every “we’re disgusted” dance these arms of government do, they posture for their voters and play Nero’s fiddle while the burning of Rome goes unattended.

It has become clear the Treasury, at the White House’s order, has been shut out from promoting any banking rescue plan that costs money. Congress has hung the “don’t ask” sign on the door. The Federal Reserve’s decision to purchase long dated treasuries in the open market, as a means to push some liquidity back into the economy, is a response to this. The Fed realizes it needs to accomplish whatever it can in the face of the Executive and Legislative branches sitting out on constructive strategic resolution.

Our Congress is afraid of how they’ll be seen by the voter if they willingly appropriate the kind of funds it will take to stand behind banking while it is reconstructed. Though they are unable to see how they will look to the voter when the problem is beyond their belated acceptance of its magnitude to do anything about it.