Mitt Romney lost the South Carolina Republican primary by failing to convince voters he has the character and platform to turn the country around.

South Carolinians, burdened by shuttered factories, high unemployment and vanished dreams, keenly see problems. Large corporations, sitting on $2 trillion in ready cash, invest too little in U.S. jobs and instead move production and research and development to Asia as quickly as they can.

U.S. President Barack Obama has further tilted the playing field in favor of Asian venues by tolerating higher tariffs, more discrimination in government procurement and increased manipulation of currency values by China and others. He has raised the cost of doing business in America by shutting down oil production, raising healthcare costs and tolerating the monopolization of commercial banking by Wall Street.

Romney promises to aggressively develop domestic oil and stand up to China but will encounter fierce opposition from Democrats in Congress on energy issues and from them and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on China. In addition, Wall Street bankers are among Romney's largest campaign contributors and they don't want China confronted.

Only by making a compelling case during the campaign that oil and China are central to fixing the U.S. economy will Romney obtain the mandate he needs to face down entrenched opposition on Capitol Hill and Wall Street. So far, Romney's poor performance countering opponents dinging his personal record would indicate he doesn't have the strength of character to set the national agenda and compel Congress to act.

Romney promises to send healthcare dollars to the states but offers little to anticipate governors won't be hamstrung by federal rules keeping them from solving the essential problem -- prices for healthcare and drugs are twice those in Europe. Republicans don't like price controls but a free market in healthcare doesn't exist with governments picking up more than half the tab and providers setting prices -- overtly or through lobbying.

Banking and capital markets have become a rigged game, making private equity executives and investment bankers rich and denying ordinary Americans jobs and a decent retirement.

In the wake of Dodd-Frank, more than 60 percent of all U.S. bank deposits are controlled by a handful of Wall Street financial houses; hence, depositors get less than 1 percent interest, while banks charge 4 percent or more for low-risk loans -- if you can get one.

Most Americans watch their retirement accounts wither, even as corporate profits and executive bonuses soar.

In February 1998, the Standard and Poor's 500 first closed at more than 1,000. Since, corporate profits are up more than 240 percent, while stocks have risen 31 percent -- less than required to keep pace with inflation.

Simply, most of the value created by higher profits has been captured by private equity, hedge funds and aggressive merger-and-acquisition shops at investment banks or paid out to corporate executives through lavish stock options.

Private equity and their brethren do shape up troubled companies but also load them with excessive debt to pay lavish bonuses and big returns to investors. Like executives at publically traded companies, private equity partners print lots of new stock to reward themselves. In the end, the companies, or their pieces, get sold to new investors, overburdened with debt and often fail or don't make a decent return.

That's how private equity and corporate leaders get rich, while most Americans' retirement savings stagnate or shrink. IRAs and similar vehicles are usually invested in mutual funds that include the companies Wall Street and corporate executives pillage. Ordinary Americans, every month, put their retirement savings into the market and buccaneer capitalists like Mitt Romney, overpaid chief executive officers and close lieutenants take it out.

In the bargain, businesses are compelled to slash workers pay, jack up health insurance premiums and co-pays and sack their pensions.

Americans don't need a mea culpa from Romney -- at Bain and Co. he responded to the incentives created by the Clinton-Bush-Obama financial sector policies. Rather, Americans need to know how he intends to fix capital markets so that investing in America is about creating jobs, not pirating profits.

Voters know Obama won't fix these problems -- he's had his chance and failed -- but it may be a fool's journey into the darkness to believe Romney will do any better.

(Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)