The deep divide in American society becomes wider. Wall Street is booming but, as the New York Times tells us, one in eight Americans and one in four children are now on food stamps.

The NYT reports: "More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs. Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare ... From the ailing resorts of the Florida Keys to Alaskan villages along the Bering Sea, the program is now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day."

The reason it's expanding because of the recession is pretty simple. The list doesn't include people on long term welfare any more. It's now expanded to include married couples who have lost their jobs and houses, single mothers now struggling with the recession and college graduates who can't find work.

As economist Robert Reich writes in his blog , the crisis of unemployment has split America into three groups: households in danger of losing their homes and whose kids are surviving on food stamps; people who are just managing but who are worried about losing their jobs and a small number who are taking home even more than they did in 2007.

Wall Street bankers, like those from Goldman Sachs, are in that third group and they are only there because the US Government bailed them out to the tune of $700 billion.

Reich writes: "Shame? If we've learned anything over the last year, it's that Wall Street has none. Ten months ago Wall Street lobbyists beat back a proposal to give bankruptcy judges the right to amend mortgages in order to pressure lenders to reduce principle owed, just like Wall Street lobbyists are now beating back tough regulations to prevent the Street from causing another meltdown."

What's needed is some tough Government action. That includes reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act to ensure banks can't play with other people's money, and make obscene bonuses along the way while the rest of the country suffers.