Forget for a moment sophisticated financial explanations of what went wrong and look at the campaign score card: Among the nation's 100 top political donors since 1989 are 10 of the nation's biggest banks and investment firms. Their employees showered lawmakers, political parties and presidential candidates with $170 million.

Among the companies rescued this month with your tax dollars, employees of insurance giant American International Group gave more than $9.7 million to federal campaigns since 1989, employees of Fannie Mae gave $9.4 million and employees of Freddie Mac gave $10.2 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-profit campaign finance watchdog.

While the money flowed, financial institutions generally got what they wanted in Washington  -- more freedom and less regulation. Surely, some of this week's disaster can be traced to laws that allowed the financial sector to engage in all sorts of innovative and risky behavior  -- and the absence of laws that even monitored such behavior.