Two tiers of American Business...for now

Let us not forget that we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.  Our rich are fabulously (often scandalously) rich and our poor aren't really all that poor.  Opportunity abounds for individuals to provide a living for themselves.  Small business still accounts for more than 60% of the job growth in this country.  A testament to the role and efficacy of the market and capitalism.  And yet, it seems, big business doesn't play in this world anymore.  At least, big enough business don't have to play in the capitalist market.  There are 2 tiers of American business.  There is the tier that goes to work each day trying to figure out how to provide a good or a service.  How to stay in business, meeting the needs of the customer in a way that keeps the customer coming back to them.  (Presumably because the customer still has a choice.)  And then there is the tier of business that doesn't seem to have the customer in mind at all other than as an ATM to fund their highly leveraged investment activities.  And when they can't get it directly from the customer - this tier of business is more than happy to beat a path to the governments door.  The irony here is that these corporatists go to the American taxpayer to get bailed out.  They leverage their bets (literally) 50 to 1 and then, when the market is no longer willing to buy what they've bet on, they run to Washington, tell us a crisis is imminent and ask for us to unwind their positions.  I am the first to admit that I'm not the sharpest pencil in the can.  But given the opportunity even I (intellectually, if not morally) can bet other peoples money and run to someone else when I lose it all.   I picked up a dated interview of Jim Rogers a re-knowned investor who buys investments to hold them and his comment was "Capitalism is Dead".  This guy is a very astute observer of the market - as evidenced by his use of the tools of the market to generate wealth...and perhaps in the world of business that he works and invests this is truth.  The bigger the business, the farther it is removed from the invisible hand of capitalism.  But the plumber or the carpenter.  The printer and the boutique owner.  The barber and the store owner are alive (if not well) and being completely ignored by the first tier of American business.       

While this second tier of American business is alive and well it is, nonetheless, struggling.  It sheds workers to maintain it's margins.  It waits ever so impatiently to understand the new regulatory environment and how it is going to effect their profitability.  They wait.  Meanwhile, our federal government continues to offer authority to the Fed to release more and more money into our system through quantitative easing (QE I, II. III?), persuading the world of the strength of the dollar and talking up our markets.   Confidence is what they feel makes the world go round.  The question really becomes how long can this second tier of American business remain a viable force if and when these dollars, offered against fixed supply start to make their way back into our system?