Could U.S.-based businesses be untouched by the trends sweeping the world at large?   In the interconnected contemporary world economy, it seems difficult to imagine how they might have kept themselves aloof or pristine (assuming they wanted to).

Even a cursory scan of the economic landscape reveals a number of key similarities between American corporations and their counterparts overseas—beginning with their simultaneously dwindling number and increasing size.

An ongoing process of consolidations and shakeouts in American business is leaving only a few behemoths standing in industry after industry—from banking to petroleum, aerospace to department stores, children’s toys to publishing and media.  This is no longer an environment in which enterprising individuals and their independent businesses have much of a chance.   It is increasingly dominated by a small set of entities that, in any other country, would exert considerable influence over their countries’ affairs.

Is it reasonable to believe that they could refrain from turning their economic clout into political or policy advantage here in the United States, where elected officials are desperate for campaign cash?

It certainly does not seem accidental that in such an environment the Republican Party, which has traditionally been more sympathetic to business' concerns, has been able to achieve a dramatic takeover of Congress—or that even a Democratic President has been caught offering embarrassing little come-ons like White House coffees or nights in the Lincoln bedroom to select contributors from the corporate stratosphere.