CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Americans blame the federal government more than they blame Wall Street for the nation’s current economic distress, according to a new poll from Gallup. In fact, forced to declare j’accuse to just one culprit, twice as many chose the feds:

To be sure, Americans still say financial institutions deserve a lot of blame.

In a separate question in Gallup’s survey, which was conducted Oct. 15-16, respondents were asked how much they blamed Wall Street in general, and more than three-quarters said the banks deserved “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of blame.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the question about apportioning blame between the two potential malefactors, Tea Party sympathizers were tremendously more likely to assign more blame to the government. What’s more, both Democrats and Republicans were more condemnatory of the government than finance, to varying degrees.

Occupy Wall Street supporters, as you might imagine, were indeed more likely to blame the financial services crowd, but the preference was still relatively small:

Given persistently high unemployment rates, and Washington’s insistence on arm-wrestling over the debt ceiling rather than focusing on the jobs crisis in recent months, it’s hardly surprising that there is so much anger at the federal government. A separate Gallup survey found that Americans’ confidence in their political leaders was at historic lows.

The question now is: Is there anything that the government will — or even can — do to help fix the economic wreckage that Americans blame them for? What do you think, readers?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ce0c6d91c8bd7b9a05a5c4408cb49bac