ABSTRACT
The interests of banking, finance, insurance, and real estate organizations affect virtually every aspect of today's material existence. Whether you are born into wealth or poverty, whether you experience upward or downward mobility, your career options, the taxes you pay, your housing, your workplace, the car you drive, how you invest, the retirement you experience, and the estate you leave all come within the influence of these organizations. Although the American Bankers Association, for example, is not an everyday term in most households, the resources it and other groups in this sector are able to wield make them politically important. Members of these organizations have the same professional and economic interests. All of the organizations in this sector are resource rich. The smallest of their budgets is $4 million a year. Although money is not everything, it is a flexible resource that allows an organization to buy at least some of what it may not have otherwise—for example, a skilled lobbyist, if none of its members has a relationship with an important member of Congress.
