[adventured]

You may not be familiar with US history when it comes to that. It's actually far harder to legally bribe politicians today than it was eg 100 years ago. A century ago there were hardly any laws restricting such practices.

What has changed in that time, is now the government has vast economic controls at its disposal. If the government doesn't control the economy, you can't buy economic favors from them. When the US was still a very Capitalist nation at the start of the 20th century, in which the government had little control over the economy, political bribery would not get you very far when it comes to passing laws for your own profit.

To sum it up: political bribery is far more difficult today than it was 100 years ago, but now it can buy you a lot of things whereas before it could not, because of the substantial expansion of government control over the economy.

When it comes to the financial crisis, Western Europe committed many of the same financial 'crimes' you're referring to that, that the US did. The financial, banking and real estate boom and bust hit countries from Britain to France to Germany to Spain. What happened in the US was not unique to the US, the same things were going on in a lot of 'first world' nations.

The Fed stepped in and bailed out tons of European banks for example, the same as they did US banks.

[thaumasiotes]

I was reading a while ago how a surprise candidate won some state-level election and lobbyists were falling over themselves to donate to his campaign... after he had won.

It may not be legal to give politicians money, but it's totally legal to donate to their old expired campaign, and for them to then have the campaign repay the loan they gave it.

[warfangle]

Explicit quid pro quo bribery is much harder than it used to be, certainly.

But the quid pro quo inherent in election financing ("If I make choice A, PAC #1234 will fund $5m of ads in my next campaign ... if I make choice B, I'll get a couple hundred checks from constituents at $50 each and PAC #1234 will run those $5m of ads against me") is much more insidious.