Instead of putting out the fire, or even changing things so that they are less likely to catch fire in the future, the Obama administration (like the Bush administration before it) is just fiddling with it's P.R. campaign.
With everything from the financial crisis to the Gulf oil spill, the government didn't actually help so much as launch a campaign to convince Americans that:
(1) Things aren't really that bad (when they were. See this, for example)
(2) The big companies that caused the mess are good guys who just made some wee little mistakes (when they committed fraud and criminal negligence. See this)
(3) Big changes have been made (when meaningless changes were made - primarily written by the big companies themselves - and loopholes built in so that the companies don't really have to comply with them anyway. See this)
and
(4) The government (and the above-described companies) care and have been doing a lot for the little guy (when the little guy continues to get gouged and shafted. See this, for example)
If you run down the list of programs implemented by the government in response to the financial crisis and the oil spill, you will see the same thing over and over.
