Washington culture? This about covers it.

Below is a quote from Chris Hayes that I found on The Huffington Post

HAYES: It means that the culture of Washington is totally and completely corrupt. And that the country is ruled -- and I know this sounds radical, but true -- by a very intense financial oligarchy, that basically has purchase on both parties. I mean, what you see here -- and I don't want to downplay the import of the derivatives bill that passed out of the Ag Committee and the financial regulations, some of the measures of which are quite strong and built because of this public anger -- but the fact of the matter is, drawing these lines between who's on the side of Wall Street and who isn't, every single one of these members is talking to Wall Street every day, and raising money from them, and having them whisper in their ear. And over the years, we have seen finance metastasize so that it's 40 or 50 percent of corporate profits, and funneling that money back into purchasing the assent of elected representatives in a way that brought us to this crisis point. So we can make technical fixes to regulation, but what we have to do is break the political/economic power of the banks, and that I don't see on the horizon.