Within an hour of John Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate, the US Chamber of Commerce said it was forced to abandon its position of "neutrality" because Mr Edwards was "hostile to business". I could almost hear the laughter in corporate boardrooms across the country. To argue that the Chamber intended to be, or has ever been, politically "neutral" reminds me of the film Casablanca when Claude Rains expresses shock that gambling was taking place in Rick's Café.

The line revealed the dirty little secret of the US Chamber of Commerce. It is run by the wealthy chief executives of the nation's biggest companies.