Somebody: The other thing that amazes me is the very common view that corporations can legitimately do anything legal so long as it's profitable. In some other countries, there are, or were until recently, quaint notions of corporate responsibility and noblesse oblige. Not here.
That's part of the reason U.S. executives can receive 20 times the salary of European or Japanese executives, for instance. It's also why the idea that corporate campaign donations and paid-for political advertisements are protected free speech is relatively uncontroversial.
Consider the common criticism of the Obama administration for the so-called bank bailout (which of course was initiated under Bush, but we can't expect people to remember back that far). Americans don't think through the implications of the belief that the government is spending their tax dollars on propping up the big financial institutions. If that were the case, wouldn't it suggest that it was big finance that was pulling the government's strings and not the other way around? Then, whey aren't people at least calls for more SEC prosecutions, congressional hearings, and so on? No, of course, it doesn't even occur to most people that the banks and other major corporations could possibly be held account for anything they do.