The sub-prime mortgage slump, the alarming number of zeroes appended to the average student loan balance, and any number of banking industry shenanigans: there's a campaign finance story behind each one. And as Williams Collins concludes in this article for the East Texas Review, the moral of each story is that we need full public financing of elections.

Campaign contributions grease the wheels for any number of profit-mongering schemes that prey on those whose finances are most precariously placed. Legislators whose job it is to stand up for the constituents could lose their jobs if they don't raise enough money to compete for re-election. And of course that money comes from the very interests whose profit margins rely on favorable legislative treatment.

Naturally, we are all sensitive to the evils of greed. We first learned of it in the Bible, then in history class, now in the news. Still we’re slow on the uptake. Greed pours millions into the electoral treasuries of our public officials, but we still don’t demand campaign finance reform to replace it. Our senators and representatives collect bundles from Wall Street while we blindly focus our political attention instead on the pork they bring home to local projects.

And now, if you watch carefully, Congress will inexorably bail out various banks, hedge funds, mortgage lenders, and sundry corporate players who foolishly got in too deep. They’ll do it to protect “homeowners” and the “economy,” but lenders will end up collecting most of the swag. Generous public financing of elections is the only known antidote for this MRSA-like, cure-resistant infection.