When you buy enough stocks to give you control of a target company, that's called mergers and acquisitions or corporate raiding. Hedge funds have been doing this, as well as corporate financial managers. With borrowed money you can take over or raid a foreign company too. So, you're having a monopolistic consolidation process that's pushed up the market, because in order to buy a company or arrange a merger, you have to offer more than the going stock-market price. You have to convince existing holders of a stock to sell out to you by paying them more than they'd otherwise get.

The banks' product is debt. They try to tell customers that "debts are good for you," but the customers can't afford any more debt, so there's no way the banks can continue their current business plan.

If you end internet neutrality and permit mergers of the big information technology corporations, that's a form of rent seeking. It's part of today's political revolution.

I think the less fracking there is, the better it is for the economy and society.

In housing you have jingle mail and you can walk away and leave the bank holding the bag. In the case of student loans, the debt follows you through life, and the banks or government will turn it over to collection agencies that are not very nice people and can do all sorts of harassing things to you. It's becoming a nightmare.

The United States Government has fought against creation of an international court to adjudicate the ability of national economies to pay debts.

Needless to say, banks and bondholders do not want to promote any arguments explaining the limits to how much can be paid without pushing economies into depression.