This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared at RobertRe​ich​.org.

Both parties have been drinking at the Wall Street trough. In the 2008 presidential campaign, the financial sector ranked fourth among all industry groups giving to then-candidate Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee. In fact, Obama reaped far more in contributions from the Street than did his Republican opponent.

Pres­i­den­tial aspi­rants in both par­ties are talk­ing about sav­ing the mid­dle class. But the mid­dle class can’t be saved unless Wall Street is tamed.

The Street’s excess­es pose a con­tin­u­ing dan­ger to aver­age Amer­i­cans. And its ongo­ing use of con­fi­den­tial cor­po­rate infor­ma­tion is defraud­ing mil­lions of mid­dle-class investors.

Yet most pres­i­den­tial aspi­rants don’t want to talk about tam­ing the Street because Wall Street is one of their largest sources of cam­paign money.

Do we real­ly need remind­ing about what hap­pened six years ago? The finan­cial col­lapse crip­pled the mid­dle class and poor — con­sum­ing the sav­ings of mil­lions of aver­age Amer­i­cans, and caus­ing 23 mil­lion to lose their jobs, 9.3 mil­lion to lose their health insur­ance, and some 1 mil­lion to lose their homes.

A repeat per­for­mance is not unlike­ly. Wall Street’s biggest banks are much larg­er now than they were then. Five of them hold about 45 per­cent of America’s bank­ing assets. In 2000, they held 25 percent.

And mon­ey is cheap­er than ever. The Fed con­tin­ues to hold the prime inter­est rate near zero.

This has fueled the Street’s eager­ness to bor­row mon­ey at rock-bot­tom rates and use it to make risky bets that will pay off big if they suc­ceed, but will cause big prob­lems if they go bad.

We learned last week that Gold­man Sachs has been on ashop­ping binge, buy­ing cheap real estate stretch­ing from Utah to Spain, and a vari­ety of companies.

If not tech­ni­cal­ly a vio­la­tion of the new Dodd-Frank bank­ing law, Goldman’s binge sure­ly vio­lates its spir­it.

Mean­while, the Street’s lob­by­ists have got­ten Con­gress to repeala pro­vi­sion of Dodd-Frank curb­ing exces­sive spec­u­la­tion by the big banks.

The lan­guage was draft­ed by Cit­i­group and per­son­al­ly pushed by Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMor­gan Chase.

Not inci­den­tal­ly, Dimon recent­ly com­plained of being ​“under assault” by bank regulators.

Last year JPMorgan’s board vot­ed to boost Dimon’s pay to $20 mil­lion, despite the bank pay­ing out more than $20 bil­lion to set­tle var­i­ous legal prob­lems going back to finan­cial crisis.

The Amer­i­can mid­dle class needs stronger bank reg­u­la­tions, not weak­er ones.

Last sum­mer, bank reg­u­la­tors told the big banks their plans for order­ly bank­rupt­cies were ​“unre­al­is­tic.” In oth­er words, if the banks col­lapsed, they’d bring the econ­o­my down with them.

Dodd-Frank doesn’t even cov­er bank bets on for­eign exchanges. Yet recent tur­bu­lence in the for­eign exchange mar­ket has causedhuge loss­es at hedge funds and brokerages.

This comes on top of rev­e­la­tions of wide­spread manip­u­la­tion by the big banks of the for­eign-exchange market.

Wall Street is also awash in inside infor­ma­tion unavail­able to aver­age investors.

Just weeks ago a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. court of appeals that over­sees Wall Street reversed an insid­er-trad­ing con­vic­tion, say­ing guilt requires proof a trad­er knows the tip was leaked in exchange for some ​“per­son­al ben­e­fit” that’s ​“of some consequence.”

Mean­ing that if a CEO tells his Wall Street golf­ing bud­dy about a pend­ing merg­er, the bud­dy and his friends can make a bun­dle — to the detri­ment of small, typ­i­cal­ly mid­dle-class, investors.

That three-judge pan­el was com­posed entire­ly of appointees of Ronald Rea­gan and George W. Bush.

But both par­ties have been drink­ing at the Wall Street trough.

In the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, the finan­cial sec­tor ranked fourth among all indus­try groups giv­ing to then can­di­date Barack Oba­ma and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. In fact, Oba­ma reaped far more in con­tri­bu­tions from the Street than did his Repub­li­can opponent.

Wall Street also sup­plies both admin­is­tra­tions with key eco­nom­ic offi­cials. The trea­sury sec­re­taries under Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush – Robert Rubin and Hen­ry Paul­son, respect­ful­ly, had both chaired Gold­man Sachs before com­ing to Washington.

And before becom­ing Obama’s trea­sury sec­re­tary, Tim­o­thy Gei­th­n­er had been hand­picked by Rubin to become pres­i­dent of Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York. (Gei­th­n­er is now back on the Street as pres­i­dent of the pri­vate-equi­ty firm War­burg Pincus.)

It’s nice that pres­i­den­tial aspi­rants are talk­ing about rebuild­ing America’s mid­dle class.

But to be cred­i­ble, he (or she) has to take clear aim at the Street.

That means propos­ing to lim­it the size of the biggest Wall Street banks; res­ur­rect the Glass-Stea­gall Act (which used to sep­a­rate invest­ment from com­mer­cial bank­ing); define insid­er trad­ing the way most oth­er coun­tries do – using infor­ma­tion any rea­son­able per­son would know is unavail­able to most investors; and close the revolv­ing door between the Street and the U.S. Treasury.

It also means not depend­ing on the Street to finance their campaigns.