Although that is definitely an oversimplification (there are plenty of limitations to freedom of expression), why is your description particularly odd or difficult to understand? If an executive at a public company makes misleading public statements with the intention to cause certain transactions (which may or may not be the case here), that's a pretty clear financial crime with clear victims. I don't see why jail time would be out of the question.

If you just make "outrageous" comments on twitter, why is it weird that "USA culture" wouldn't generally prescribe jail time? I'm from the USA, granted, but that sure seems like a reasonable protection of freedom of expression.

Racist comments are of course a trickier example, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a legal distinction between (protected) tasteless/offensive/insensitive statements about race/ethnicity and (not protected) statements that defame or incite violence.