I quite liked Neil Irwin’s story today, in the aftermath of earnings season at the big banks, an an object lesson into how those firms still carry a multitude of legacy troubles from the crisis years.

Jeff Connaughton has authored a powerful, and chilling insider’s perspective on the financial crisis and the pathetic governmental response to it. The second part of his title sums up the result and the first half explains why Wall Street always wins. Many, perhaps most Americans are likely to agree with both parts of Connaughton’s title so this book will not transform the public’s view of the issues. The public largely has this set of issues correct. Connaughton gives the readers unique access to the facts because he had a front row seat to many of the key discussions and he has the analytical abilities and expertise to explain the significance of those facts.

Before last night’s debate, Jeff Connaughton, former chief of staff to Senator Ted Kaufman and longtime aide to Joe Biden and President Clinton, offered some advice to Mitt Romney. He thought Romney should go after Barack Obama’s biggest weakness: the failure to prosecute Wall Street crimes.

In actuality, Romney only submitted a glancing blow with respect to Wall Street, claiming that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law “designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they’re effectively guaranteed by the federal government… There’ve been 122 community and small banks have closed since Dodd- Frank.”

Here is an edited transcript of our conversation, which covered financial reform, money in politics, and the insidious grip of Big Money over Washington.

The not-as-funny way to make the point Jon Stewart made about the Republican conception of the entitlement society and where it fails to intersect with reality comes from Simon Johnson. The true “moochers” in American life are, not surprisingly, the ones with all the political power and influence, who can grab themselves gifts and goodies from the political class.

Four years later, we have not seen a systematic dismantling of the conditions that created the crisis. We’ve seen trillions in emergency support thrown at the banks that survived the crash, all of whom have grown bigger and more indispensible, even more “Too Big to Fail” than before. We’ve seen cosmetic regulatory changes, many unrelated to the crash at all, which have not yet been tested and in many not yet implemented. And the core problems of a massive financial sector have not been resolved.

I’d be a bit surprised to see Neil Barofsky grace the airwaves of CNBC again. But I have good news for CNBC. I have another exciting guest opportunity for them.

We round up news stories from the last 24 hours, including items about Saudi Arabia, Syria, African drug wars, Greek euro exit, too big to fail, income distribution, airline fees, Wall Street looting, Kochs, American decline, Michele Bachmann, and more.

Let’s not let this little tidbit go unremembered today. Remember when Jamie Dimon came out and said that his firm’s little escapade in London cost them $2 billion? Try $9 billion.

James Pethokoukis, a columnist for the American Enterprise Institute, writes in the pages of the Weekly Standard in favor of a breakup of the big banks. He doesn’t get to that conclusion the way I would get to that conclusion, but the fact he does may signal a potential transpartisan alliance on going after the big banks.

Joe Nocera admitted yesterday, building on previous opinion and research, that Dodd-Frank, the financial reform law, was essentially too complex to work. He cites Sallie Krawcheck, who notes that the complexity of the trades JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Investment Office made led to the bank misunderstanding and mismanaging the risks. Aside from banks being too big to fail, her comments lead to the conclusion that mega-banks are actually too complex to manage.