Matt Damon: Public fury over banking scandals boils heading into presidential election

SAN DIEGO – Matt Damon says there’s a sense of fury in the U.S. over banking scandals and financial inequality that neither Democrats nor Republicans are addressing in their presidential campaigns.

The 41-year-old actor made his comments at Comic-Con in San Diego, where he was promoting the sci-fi thriller “Elysium,” about a future in which the ultra-rich escape a dying Earth to live in a poverty-free, illness-free orbiting habitat. The film is set for release next March.

Damon said he expects President Obama to be elected to a second term in November but isn’t as staunch a supporter as he once was.

“I’d be shocked if (Mitt) Romney won. You know, I think Obama is the clear choice. But I’ve said before I’m really disappointed in him, and I am, particularly because of the banking stuff. He so misread that,” Damon said. “That sense of unfair — the sense that we don’t have a country anymore when people don’t feel like they have a chance, like it’s going to be fair. … If people feel like the deck is stacked against them, then they stop playing by the rules. Because why play by the rules? The game is fixed, right?”

Damon said both parties and the mainstream media haven’t paid enough attention to groups like the Tea Party and the Occupy movement.

“I don’t think the Republicans or the Democrats really understand the level of anger at the sense of unfairness that the majority of people in the country feel,” he said.

The star of the “Bourne” trilogy, known for speaking out about politics in the past, pointed to a Bruce Springsteen concert he attended several months ago at Madison Square Garden. Springsteen sang a song from his new album titled “Jack of All Trades,” which criticizes the gap between haves and have-nots and the greed of Wall Street bankers.

“He says: ‘If I had me a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot them on sight.’ Now when he says that, when he’s saying that, the place roared. I mean, roared. Like 30,000 people involuntarily screamed their approval. And it was so alarming,” Damon said. “I went backstage after and saw him and it was the first thing he said to me. He’s singing to firemen and cops and real people. And the fury that’s there is very, very real.”