It’s a revealing political irony that while President Barack Obama bemoans income inequality, his administration has poured trillions of dollars into the pockets of the nation’s richest financiers.

The trickle-down bailout strategy behind the Federal Reserve’s flushing of $85 billion a month into big banks has failed miserably and doubly. Not only has hardly any of that money reached middle-class Americans and small businesses that need it, but large investment banking and securities players have grown fatter and happier, sometimes in criminal fashion.

But isn’t the Democratic Party the party of the people?

The first rule of propaganda is that if something is stated often enough, the average person will believe it.

Both political parties are culpable in the now-decades-long debacle that has tilted the scales of economic prosperity toward major financial-sector firms, but no administration in history has greased the skids for big-scale greed more capably than this one.

How many jobs are created when stocks are traded?

The change of ownership of a stock certificate is a zero-job proposition.

It is not a zero-dollar proposition, however.

And therein lies the irreconcilable difference in risk-and-reward scenario between investment bankers who create few jobs and small-business owners who create many.

High-risk volatility in financial markets can create huge gains for big banks and bankers. All you have to do is look at the billions of dollars of profits generated by firms like JPMorgan Chase in a supposedly down economy.

But it’s not down on Wall Street when the Fed is buying trillions of dollars of securities, and when financial rewards are reaped not by producing goods or services, but by converting buy-sell transactions on paper.

Financial volatility is poison to businesses seeking to manage long-term investments in both employees and equipment.

Rhetorically, President Obama is right. Reviving America’s middle class is the challenge of the early 21st Century.

Practically, however, his policies have done the opposite. Arguably no president is more responsible for the richest 1 percent getting richer, or less active in real reform to restore middle-class growth.

Perhaps because of his executive inexperience, some powers that be simply played the president. Regardless of the reason, in times of trouble it often helps to look at past history for clues both about why things might be worse now, and what made things better then.

For example, there is simply no historical evidence that high marginal tax rates and robust economic growth are incompatible. Post-war America prospered like never before with a top tax bracket of 91 percent or more from 1946 till John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The key-then and now-is that the top bracket must be reserved for the truly rich to be progressively effective.Anybody who thinks a $250,000 annual income today qualifies as “top-bracket rich” (and that would include most of Congress) is an ignoramus, at least as a student of taxation history.

The equivalent of $200,000 in 1960, which is where the top bracket began, is more than $1.5 million today.

True FDR-esque Democrats should be leading the clarion call for taxing the rich, who despite such high-rate brackets, still managed to get richer during America’s boom decades during the 1950s and 1960s.

But they didn’t get richer in those days at today’s avaricious rate. Top-selling public-company CEO pay even a mere 35 years ago was only 29 times the typical worker’s wage; today it’s 273 times as much.

Gains of such magnitude are magnets for ill-gotten schemers, and it’s hard to name a big bank or investment firm without a high-profile executive in prison.

The current administration’s stance against greed-based illegality in the financial sector has been primarily to prosecute only the kingpins, and mete out very affordable fines or settlements.

Consider JPMorgan Chase’s agreement to pay victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme $1.7 billion. Why not pay the U.S. Treasury? If ever “let the buyer beware” should be the prevailing standard, it ought to be in the high-stakes halls of quick-fortune seeking high-rollers-not the taxpayers who ultimately cover all federal bailouts.

And what is $1.7 billion to a company that posted $53 billion in profits from 2011 to mid-2013?

A mere month of corporate income.

For real reform, create an environment where greed at the mid-manager level and up means financial ruin and jail time. That would return the risk-reward ratio to a balance of deterrence.

The middle class doesn’t deal with big investment banks. It frequents community banks, who time after time say regulators use rules supposedly designed (and politically sold) to rein in wildcat Wall Street banks to stifle and stagnate lending for small-business customers and consumers.

A pro-middle-class government would be a lot less worried about small-town banks scamming off car loans, and a lot more worried about Wall Street banks bilking billions.

There’s nothing wrong with some income inequality, which has always been with us. It’s mega-sized government favoring mega-sized banks that is of recent vintage, and neither wants the public connecting the dots and restoring former restraints.

But that’s exactly what needs to happen.

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Dana Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial, Pages 17 on 01/10/2014