Gretchen Morgenson has earned a Pulitzer-winning career from exposing abuse and conflicts of interest on Wall Street. In this interview, she confirms that there is indeed a second set of rules that our elite financial institutions enjoy, largely unfettered by the constraints that apply to the rest of us.

Consequences for failure and fraud are very different under this second set of rules - in fact, they're practically rewarded. Accountability, by all prudent measures, has become non-existent. The extraordinary measures the country deployed to deal with the great contraction in 2008 only served to exacerbate these imbalances.

What's sorely needed now is a national dialogue on whether we're willing to allow this to continue. What benefits are we receiving by enabling these elite to enjoy such different standards? What type of system and rules might work better for our interests?