Don't Call It Capitalism
Call it what it is, what WSJ commenter David Perlman calls it -- "crony capitalism":

Wall Street is a den of agnostics who ask: What will you do for me and how much will it cost? They don't make the laws, but they will pay what it takes to get the laws they want.

Of course, lawmakers should be beyond purchase, but too many are not.

The net result is crony capitalism, nee fascism, wherein the connected are bailed out at the expense of the rest. Goldman Sachs, AIG, GM, Chrysler, etc...These are all the poster children for America's disgust with business. The bailouts of these and other former and unfortunately continuing titans of industry are as egregious as any of the corruption in Greece. Maybe more-so, because at least in Greece everyone acknowledges the cheating and theft for what it is, whereas here the payouts were formulated in backrooms and justified with catastrophic stories that enabled the cheats to maintain not only their riches but, to some degree, their reputations.

It is these heinous deals that have mortgaged our country's future, and that infuriate the average person. But none of them would be possible if the government itself were beyond reproach. The average person doesn't hate business, although that is the story the sensationalistic and sound bite oriented media would spin. They hate the CRONY capitalists who make up only a small fraction of business, but who have robbed the public coffers of so much.

The real problem is that government is now so big that the spoils available to those with the appropriate clout and bribes are of such grandeur that they can, indeed, destroy our country. I don't see how you begin to fix that, except by substantially reducing the size of government.