Politicians catered to big banks and other deep-pocketed special interest groups and passed measures to help the wealthy and Wall Street, but not for Main Street, says Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz.

"As we look back on 2010, the most significant economic event of the year was what didn't happen: Unemployment failed to come down, stubbornly hovering around 9.5 percent almost four years after the bubble broke, three years after the beginning of the recession and more than two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers," says Stiglitz, according to the New York Daily News.

"This stagnation persisted because our political leaders failed to muster the requisite courage to tackle our problems at their source."

Influential bankers wielded their influence on Washington, from watering down the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill to pushing through certain tax cuts that will help them more than the average American, says Stiglitz.

"There is hardly a worse way of squandering money, with a lower bang for the buck."

"What is the logic that says that Americans who work for a living should be taxed at twice the rate faced by speculators, who strive to bring down whole economies and have repeatedly succeeded in creating havoc around the world?"

The result, says Stiglitz, will mean unemployment rates will stay high in 2011.

The national unemployment rate in November hit 9.8 percent, a seven-month high, due to weak hiring, according to the latest official data.

Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, said December's jobless numbers should show a rebound and added that bumps are normal along the road to recovery.

"We shouldn't panic," Naroff tells the Associated Press. "In any recovery, it is not smooth sailing."