Honestly, the short term thinking of corporations could easily be explained by excessive government involvement in the economy ... Since the government has the power to bail out powerful and connected corporations no matter how poorly their business was run, corporations don't have to consider long term viability of their company because buying influence with the government ensures they will survive no matter how poorly they are run.

On top of that, it isn't difficult to ensure that corporations are responsible for all externalities they produce, and the board of directors are accountable for all laws broken by the corporation, and to follow through with this. In most cases it is pretty straightforward to calculate the cost of reversing the harm caused by coporations, and appropriate penalties can be assessed by a court of law. If a corporation trys to buy influence from a judge or elected official the board of directors should be charged with a crime and should go to jail.

It doesn't take that many companies going bankrupt from being short sighted, that man companies seeing multi-billion dollar penalties for being irresponsible, or that many boards going to jail for breaking the law to get the vast majority of corporations to act responsibly

But that only applies if you get deemed "Too Big To Fail," which is a risk in and of itself. Lehman Brothers and Behr Sterns weren't Too Big, even if AIG was. The risk of complete annihilation outweighs the chance of a bailout, and plus if you find yourself having to get bailed out, are investors really going to look kindly on you in the future?

Was AIG really "too big to fail" or was it "too well connected to fail"?

Regardless of whether there will be a bailout or not, or what form the bailout takes on, the possibility of a bailout impacts how companies evaluate the risk associated with their actions. Consider that many of the businesses/industries that are bailed out end up requiring another bailout years later, the most likely reason for this is that these businesses make decisions which (at least in part) are driven with the expectation that they will be bailed-out if things go poorly.

True free market capitalism is the American dream...

Welcome to the neofeudal age.

You have it wrong with the highlighted part of your quote. Ever hear of "Lobbying"? The fact that wealth management in any industry has access to government for for any benefit to the corporations is fact, while the average Joe or Jane can't even get a congressional ear. Example, do you get bail-out(s) for failing to control your own economic situation? Do you get special tax incentives for your business by just creating a company (just look at the oil companies)? In true capitalism, companies should succeed or fail based on a sound business foundation, not on the premise of gettimg government support, in which some the largest corporations get. You hear many pro-business people, and even those who are part of that electorate, screaming for Social Security reform (or even its removal) and getting rid of Medicare because it is "Socialism", which I can only agree with to an extent. But, then they can get tax breaks and bailouts for making bad decisions, well, it can't go just one way; talk about a warped reversal role to corporate socialism.

Look at IPOs in the stock market, only the wealthiest people have access to them before the remainder of the stock goes public, and by that time, the IPOs become more valued as the general public buys into any IPO related stiock once it is available to them. This rule is government controlled. Considering this, I think 'laissez faire' in a misnomer considering the benefits government gives to large corps and those who have the money to get access to congressional members. But it certainly works as such once they get their way :/.

One can have a case by saying the government enables a degree of fraud anywhere, and short-term thinking.  But to say that the government is the only reason is absurd.  This line of reasoning is to believe that Fannie and Freddie Mac were the reason why Wall Street overleveraged and derivates and engaged in credit-default swaps.  It is pushing it way too far.

You had robosignings happening and large degree of fraud, in addition to the other stuff.  No one is going to jail for the robosignings, just fines paid.

And now, you have MF Global, as the latest round of fraud happening.  Over a billion in privately held accounts went missing, with Corzine going scott free.  It is a mistake, or something that is clamed.  It is likely the money end up in Goldman Sach's account.  But nothing is likely to happen.  

And the rule with Wall Street is no one goes to jail (well, almost no one unless they run an outright Ponzi), because it is all seen as some sort of giant mistake.  Scamming gets hidden in risk, and the beat goes on.

The current relationship between the government and corporations has nothing to do with free market (laissez faire) capitalism ...

If you take away the power of the government to give special benefits to particular favoured organization, and eliminate the ability for corporations, unions and special interest groups to buy influence from the government, corporations and government officials no longer would have anything to gain from eachother.

This thread just goes to show how good the media is at corrupting our minds.

The media just lends to the collective mindframe society has, to prevent people from going insane for lacking one.  The media puts out what people buy, and manufactures it to keep the attention of people so they can sell advertising.  If the do the Fox News route, the pander to one political perspective, complete with the blogger buy-in.  One thing that is interesting in all this is that, even with the entire world of information available over the Internet, people still will stay in their own mental play area and continue to reenforce their biases.  And I stand by this, even if people say I am guilty of it also, and stand by it as a rule, even if there are exceptions.

Actually, the number of people who do so are a small part of the population.

The issue is, it's just the part of the nation that cares most about daily news.

For example, for all the ratings Fox News and MSNBC gets... whenever there is a BIG story... CNN pulls ahead to first place in the coverage.

People who are interested in news and aren't tied to any particular point I imagine are a lot like me.  Using agregate news sources to get a few articles all on the same subject from different viewpoints.