James Galbraith addresses this phenomenon in his book published last summer called "The Predator State." It was a very timely book and I highly recommend it. The financial people took over American capitalism from the industrialists in the 1980s and they've been preying on it since. Like happened in the run up to the Great Depression (and before many other long economic downturns before that), they've run the system for themselves, not for their companies. Sociopathy is rewarded and cooperation is looked down upon.

By the 1990s, companies in all the great industrial sectors, such as Aerospace, Autos, Computers, etc. were no longer being run by people who cared about the companies' products or services, but by people who only saw a balance sheet and an opportunity to siphon off wealth for themselves. This gave the banks and the investment houses (which eventually became the same thing after Glass-Stegall repeal) ever increasing power to force the industrial companies to act against their long-term and America's long-term self interest.

As Thom Hartmann is fond of proposing, a return to a very high marginal tax rate (such as the 91% rate during the Eisenhower administration, or the 70% rate before Reagan) for income above a few million dollars would mean predators like this would not be interested in running large companies. Rather, people who wanted to pursue long-term accomplishments would run the companies and we'd have a return to a stable, growing, middle-class oriented economy.