Don’t get in a car wreck in Jefferson County, Alabama. Or if you do - don’t expect the county sheriff to send his deputies out to see if you’re ok. That’s because beginning this Saturday - Jefferson County will no longer dispatch sheriff’s deputies to traffic accidents because the county can’t afford it.

What else can the county no longer afford? About 1/3 of all their public employees. 1,000 Jefferson County public workers will soon be told to go home without pay - nobody knows how long - because the county can’t find the money necessary to cover their salaries.

This is what a county on the verge of bankruptcy in America looks like.

But while Jefferson County is scrounging for nickels in the couch cushions - Wall Street giant JP Morgan Chase just posted the biggest quarterly profit in the history of that bank - $5.6 billion for three months. Add that to the $17 billion in profits the bank made last year and it’s pretty clear that JP Morgan Chase is sitting on a mountain of cash.

And a lot of those profits are why those Jefferson County sherriffs can't afford to check out traffic accidents.

Here's how the banksters screwed the county.

Back in 2002 - Jefferson County officials were looking for a way to update their leaky and decrepit sewage system. Estimates for a new sewage system were around $250 million - and a group of county officials with close ties to Wall Street had a great idea on how to finance it - they’d take out some loans from JP Morgan Chase.

Only instead of taking out safe fixed-rate loans - the kinds counties traditionally did - JP Morgan Chase and the county officials went with dangerous adjustable rate loans - sub-prime loans for a county - those same loans that millions of homeowners were bilked into buying during the housing bubble that eventually crash our economy.

JP Morgan knew these type of loans would increase their profits - and the elected county officials figured that by the time interest rates went up on the sewage system loans - they’d be long gone out of office.

But what this deal did - is it turned a $250 million sewage project into a $5 billion un-payable debt to Wall Street.

Of course - just like Jefferson County - JP Morgan Chase found itself in financial trouble too - back in 2008 - when their subprime mortgage holders like Jefferson County couldn't pay off on the exploding mortgages that they'd hustled them to buy, while at the same time the entire stock market went into a nosedive.

But JP Morgan Chase, however, was saved by a $25 billion bailout courtesy of you and me - the taxpayers.

But Jefferson County - they got squat. And that’s why banksters at JP Morgan Chase are making historic profits - while Jefferson County police can’t get paid.

The 12 million dollars that Jefferson County needs to avoid laying off public workers represents just about one week's worth of the profits that JP Morgan Chase made at the beginning of this year - sixty-eight minutes worth of JP Morgan Chase profits could make the county whole.

This story tells the tale of two economic recoveries in America - Wall Street’s recovery and Main Street’s recovery.

Take a look at this chart that shows bankster profits right back where they were before the economic downturn [first chart] - a complete recovery on Wall Street.

It’s not just Wall Street - it’s corporate America in general - a full recovery since our economy blew up in 2008. So while the bigwigs are back to business as usual - what about the rest of us?

Here’s chart showing average working Americans’ share of the national income:

This is quarterly profits here - in billions [second chart]. And here's the worker's share of national income. This is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Notice something interesting here that happens in 2007? Right there. [it drops sharply] right after the Bush tax cuts of 2004.

So all those profits that corporate America - in particular Wall Street - is collecting, they aren't trickling down to the rest of us.

But then again - why would they? Just because Reagan said it would happen?

Frankly, Reagan lied - there is no trickle-down fairy, and trickle-down economics just produces a nation of peons.

Why should we have expected the very same banksters who had no problem ripping off millions of homeowners - ripping off counties, ripping off states, ripping off entire COUNTRIES - why should we have expected those banksters to pull money out of THEIR treasure chests, out of THEIR pockets, and help us like we helped them?

This is what a Wall Street-dominated America looks like.

A place where a handful of Wall Street executives take home billions of dollars while Jefferson County goes bankrupt.

That's The Big Picture.