I began this series before the 1998 election, when "change" was the most common word uttered in campaign speeches. Candidates from both major parties promised that if elected they would change the policies that have done so much damage to the nation and the wellbeing of its people.

My thesis was fairly simple. The root cause for these disasters isn't the policies themselves, but the outdated economic and political institutions that create them. And the process by which politicians achieve and maintain their positions ensures that few will have the will or courage to challenge the institutions themselves.

So let's test this thesis. Six months into a new presidential administration and Congress, what has become of the candidates' change promises?

Healthcare

When he was a Senator, Barack Obama declared himself a "proponent of single-payer universal health care." He said that the only reason why single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, take back the Senate, and take back the House."

Now that this has happened, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) is conducting hearings on healthcare reform. On May 12, he had five doctors and nurses arrested when, from the audience, they asked why he would not allow a single proponent of a single-payer system to testify.

The president and a majority of congressional Democrats are now advocating a system which would largely continue current arrangements, but individual consumers could opt for a publicly managed healthcare plan. The proposal is a costly giveaway to insurance and drug companies, and patients who opted for the public plan would probably be among the most costly to treat.

Obama could successfully speak directly to the electorate, presenting unequivocal evidence that a single payer system would produce better outcomes and reduce administrative costs to 1% from their current 15-to-30%. He could mobilize the 60% of Americans and 60% of their doctors who say they would prefer such a plan. Instead, his "pragmatic" approach underestimates Americans and squanders his mandate.

Over the last decade, the healthcare industry spent $2.9 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Financial Regulation

"Change" candidates took turns surfing the wave of public anger against those of the greedy whom the public perceived as responsible for the financial meltdown. Since being elected or reelected, they have done nothing to change the underlying institutions that make such disasters inevitable.

Instead, Bankers and their lobbyists, shameless with regard to their role in the meltdown, persuaded lawmakers to eliminate an 18% interest-rate cap from the credit-card reform bill. They successfully opposed a measure in the Senate that would have allowed 1.7 million homeowners facing foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages in bankruptcy court.

The previous episode of public thievery (Remember Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom?) prompted cries for reform. We got the usual window dressing and piecemeal band-aids. Treasury Secretary Geithner's current proposals don't seem much different. Here's one example.

Derivatives are financial contracts whose prices derive from something else-stocks, commodities, exchange rates, interest rates, inflation, etc. They are often complex, difficult to understand, and enormously profitable for banks. Their massive debt leveraging played a significant role in the meltdown. Geithner proposes allowing customized derivatives to trade privately, outside of public view.

Over the last decade the financial services industry spent $3.4 billion on lobbying. It spent $1.7 Billion on federal election contributions.

Military Spending

We should be spending public money to make ourselves more secure instead of enriching what President Eisenhower called the military-congressional-industrial complex. In the segment on military spending, I wrote, "If Barack Obama does not make some tough decisions about where and how to make deep cuts in military spending, he won't have money to do anything else."

It seems that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates does want to eliminate costly and ineffective programs. This has been a staple in many Democratic legislators' speeches for years. But if such cuts would eliminate pork from a legislator's own district, then threatened programs become worthy necessities.

Among the examples of waste that I cited in the military spending segment was the chronically troubled and strategically useless F-22 fighter. It costs $44,000 per hour to fly, and the Pentagon and President don't want it. But now, Senators Kennedy, Kerry, and a congressional majority are poised to approve it.

Over the past decade, the defense industry spent $835 million on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Energy and Climate Change

A policy that effectively controlled energy costs and fought climate change would have to do three things: end our addiction to oil and coal, accelerate our transition to cleaner and cheaper energy sources, and make polluters pay for their greenhouse gasses. The American Clean Energy and Security Act that is now in congressional committee can't do any of these. It is riddled with loopholes and larded with hundreds of billions in giveaways.

Focusing on one small point, there is no safe way to remove and store CO2 produced by burning coal. By the time such technology could be developed, alternative energy sources would be much cheaper. Yet with a straight face, Obama continues to speak favorably about "clean coal."

Over the past decade, the energy and natural resources industry spent $2.1 billion on lobbying. This does not include campaign contributions.

Economists describe our institutions' incapacity to place a proper value on a clean atmosphere and humanity's future as a "market failure." In fact, it is the inevitable evolution of the market as we know it. In the last segment of this series, I'll describe why this is so, and how we might change it.