If you haven’t seen it yet, there is still time.

It’s a Wonderful Life. The film with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. It first came out in black and white and then was colourized. For a lot of people it’s a Christmas tradition along with A Charlie Brown Christmas.

But this year, watching it again, it really hit me. It is shockingly relevant to the post-2008 crash world. It scans as a parable about Goldman Sachs, except in the movie Goldman is called Mr. Potter. He’s the Scrooge of the piece.

Frank Capra made the film in 1946, as the world picked up the pieces after the war. It’s the story of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, who gets pulled into keeping the local credit union afloat after his dad dies and his brother marries up.

George defers his own dreams. Rather than travel and pursue his own ambitions he ends up staying in Bedford Falls and marrying the girl who has loved him since childhood. George keeps up the family tradition of helping low-income people finance a start-up home with the pooled resources of the Bailey Building and Loan Association.

Like that terrific scene in Mary Poppins, suddenly there is run on the banks and the Building and Loan almost goes under. That’s where solidarity and community kicks in. The film touches all the deep undercurrents of an ideal America, where everything works out in the end. It was a wonderful dream.

But in today’s America the savings and loan societies were among the first under President Ronald Reagan to see the oversight laws changed so they could "invest" in all sorts of tricky enterprises. As soon as the oversight disappeared, the savings and loan presidents gambled like crazy – and paid themselves towering salaries.

In just a few years the schemes collapsed and the government had to step in to save the savings and loan associations. But a lot of ordinary people, like the fictional people in Bedford Falls, lost everything. There was no George Bailey willing to pay out his own savings to put off bankruptcy.

Federal prosecutors stepped in and followed up with vigour. A lot of banksters went to jail.

Fast forward to 2008-2011. The apropos movie is still It’s a Wonderful Life. But now add a fresh look at financial America. The movie now is Margin Call, a thinly disguised treatment of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Wall Street. Corruption on a breathtaking scale is depicted.

The firm takes worthless financial instruments, "repackages" them and sells them to other bankers at other firms, trying to pass on the worthless paper as fast as they can. When the music stops, they will not be the ones holding the steaming bags of… what would Justin Trudeau call it? Merde.

The ensuing crash depicted in Margin Call in real time was experienced around the world. We are still suffering. But the difference from the savings and loan disaster is that practically nobody has gone to jail for outright criminal acts. Especially at Goldman Sachs, in the firm Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone calls the "great vampire squid" of the financial world.

And for all of us who had so much hope in Barack Obama, one can only reach one conclusion why none of these bankers are not under multiple indictments. It’s called campaign cash. Obama’s people think he needs a billion to put away the crazy Republicans.

Financial websites are reporting that the President is asking the top Wall Street money men in for private chats in the Oval Office. He can only be telling them that if they re-elect him, pour generously into his campaign coffers, then they will stay out of jail. Rule one: Follow the money.

So pull out even the colourized version of It’s a Wonderful Life. And weep. Because the bad guys, the bankers who ate the soul of America, the Mr. Potter of the Capra film, have almost won.

There is a scene cut out of It’s a Wonderful Life. It shows the evil banker confronted by George Bailey’s guardian angel. And in a scene straight out of A Christmas Carol, he is shown his tombstone. And he gets his comeuppance, dying of a heart attack. But even then Hollywood couldn’t deliver that kind of swift justice. That scene hit the cutting room floor.

As this annus horribilis ends, one can take some comfort from the "indignés" and Occupy Wall Street’s ongoing protest. Last week they occupied Goldman Sachs, chanting "We fry calamari!"

We can only hope.