Islands like the Caymans are well-known as corporate tax havens, and earlier this week Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders railed against rampant offshore tax abuse. What's less well-known, but perhaps just as troubling, is that hedge funds use these havens to avoid something else as well: proper governance.

This technology-driven, partly outsourced, too-big-to-fail bureaucracies of today are more difficult to maneuver than that of yesteryear. And the frustration and angst it breeds are one reason the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements resonate with Americans.

The news that President Obama will wine and dine with top Wall Street CEOs is just the latest example of how the "wizards" of Wall Street and their Washington allies continue to win -- their clout seemingly undiminished -- in the face of spectacular failure.

The kind of structural corruption present in American politics and industry today is reminiscent of what one sees in modern communist China, or during the transition years away from communism in Eastern Europe.

A signature feature of the shadow lobbyist era is not just a manipulation of public policy, but also an embrace of "failing upward". No matter the track record, the elite 1 percent seek more of the same.

Like efforts by good citizens to clean up a decrepit park frequented by drug dealers, it's time to pick up the trash left by the financial destruction, and challenge each other to clean up our acts.

Banks keeping competitors out and price information to themselves are using tactics designed to maximize profits, but there's nothing free market about those tactics. It's up to the government to "free" the market, but so far it's failed.

When institutional walls separating functions and ensuring balance of power are weak, players can concentrate and intensify their influence. This is now what we're seeing with the dairy lobby -- i.e. "big cheese".

Iceland's crash, for which the Prime Minister has now been indicted, is another case in which networks of public-private players, purporting to serve the public interest, instead capture official information to serve their own interests.

Ever heard of a private security contractor name Paravant? XPG? No? Well, that's just as Blackwater, the parent company of Paravant, XPG and dozens of other "subsidiaries", would have it.