Where’s Wall Street?

TPM highlights this Steve Pearlstein piece on the near-complete absence of the leaders of Wall Street from the bailout process:

In putting several trillion dollars in government funds on the line, the country has now done just about everything that Wall Street could have asked to address the financial crisis. The question now, as John Kennedy might have put it, is what Wall Street is ready to do for its country. So far, the answer is not much.

After getting their closed-door briefing yesterday from Paulson on the government’s latest initiatives, Wall Street’s finest literally ran from the Treasury to their waiting limousines, bypassing a media scrum eager to convey any scrap of wisdom or insight.

[ . . . ]

Their silence and invisibility throughout this crisis attests to the moral and political bankruptcy of a financial elite that is the perfect match for the financial bankruptcy they have now visited upon their investors, their creditors and their customers.

Pretty much.  And remember, these are the same folks that the “free market” true believers will tell you ought to be left to their own devices, so (somehow) public good will result.