The limited-liability corporation is a ubiquitous feature of modern life that many regard as morally neutral. Yet when we consult traditional ethical theories – such as deontology and virtue ethics – it seems that we cannot account for such leniency. The traditional theories namely imply that corporate bankruptcies are moral catastrophes in the sense that the owners and/or managers are allowed to escape responsibility and liability for their wrongdoings. In the present chapter, we seek to develop a theoretical explanation of people’s more lenient attitude. Our alternative view is that the ethical norms that are appropriate for attributing responsibility or liability in a market context are somewhat different from those that apply in other social contexts, such as the ordinary morality of civil life. This view is supported by our theory that the market is an ethically distinct part within an organic social whole, and conditional upon a social safety net that softens the excesses of market outcomes.