As someone with no economics knowledge beyond general reading these are quite difficult concepts to understand.

But...... to my untrained eye it seems that once big capital realised that it paid no tax on debt, that many companies could be squeezed of "expensive overheads" such as pensioned workers by outsourcing to asia, and it had banks all too willing to lend the money at a low interest rate there was only one way for this to go. To me it has all the hallmarks of a bubble, theres only so many companies that can be bought by high leveraged buyouts. The companies then spend all their profit servicing the debt with none spent on innovation, supposedly the real driver of capitalism.

But these issues are usually too far from most peoples comprehension so continue unchecked. However recently the impact of private equity has become a talking point in the UK and tomorrow the parlimentary Treasury select committee confronts five leaders of private equity groups. Whether anything comes of it is another matter.