The impetus for the housing bubble was government intervention in the mortgage market. Deregulation was the mechanism used to carry out the fraud. Both parties played a part, but Congress went over the top in putting pressure on lending institutions to make loans to unqualified borrowers. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for trying to reign in the poor mortgage underwriting they helped foster (or required via threats). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had many defenders that engaged in the political crusade to promote "affordable housing". Among the foremost were Dodd, Frank, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel. In other words, the usual dumbasses. Those turds are as far from corporate advocates as you can get. The "massive profits" you mention caused some of the largest financial firms in the U.S. to go bankrupt, or be saved by bailouts. I agree that there were massive profits for some briefly, but not in the end.Let's take two of your topics; the housing bubble and Obamacare.
The impetus for the housing bubble was deregulation of the banking industry. This is what made possible securitization and massive leveraging. The push for deregulation was made under the Clinton administration and pushed by Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, among others. The Federal Reserve drove interest rates low which increased demand. It resulted in massive profits for the financial industry. Property values soared, fraud permeated throughout the period with bogus appraisals, liar loans enabled unqualified buyers to make purchases, rating agencies fudged numbers, and banks sold securities to duped investors. The "boom" was basically built on fraud. Just like any ponzi, it eventually collapsed when the number of buyers became too low to support the bubble.
But nobody important went to jail, the top executives got to keep their millions, the taxpayer bailed out the banks that were impaired (except Lehman), and the combination of QE and zero interest policy continues to this day robbing savers of interest in order to keep the FIRE economy propped up. If I recall, the polls showed the public opposed the bailout by a whopping majority but the bailout passed regardless. Who has the power?
Obamacare was written by lobbyists representing the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The bill was written so that the government would backstop any losses that might occur to insurance companies. How have stock prices performed for these companies since Obamacare was passed? Their profits? Pretty damn good. Who's interest was really served, the corporate or that of the public?
Here is a quote from one of the authors of Obamacare (Jonathan Gruber):
You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing…and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” Another author was a known communist and felon named Robert Creamer. If insurance carriers had written the law, they wouldn't have the need to pull out of the Obamacare exchange market en masse. Not only have they not made a profit off of writing policies for Obamacare, they have suffered huge losses.