Increasing inequality is both a cause and effect of political change, according to journalist Hedrick Smith. The result was a political landscape dominated in the 1990s and 2000s by business groups, specifically "political insiders" – former members of Congress and government officials with an inside track – working for "Wall Street banks, the oil, defense, and pharmaceutical industries; and business trade associations." In the decade or so prior to the Great Divergence, middle-class-dominated reformist grassroots efforts – such as the civil rights movement, environmental movement, consumer movement, labor movement – had considerable political impact.