The difference is the last ten years have invented a new type of parasite that feeds on corporations and turns them into "soulless" monsters. Get any of these parasites that suck the wealth out of public companies by acquiring controlling stock, short-term inflating it (often by cutting wages and closing stores) and then leaving the company with its wealth drained, its stock near worthless and a new group of unemployed or minimum wage slaves and part-timers.

This company now must seek a merger before it folds up completely. K-mart and Sears are now merged and the same parasite hit both of them, first infecting a flagging K-mart and then, years later, a weakened Sears.

The result? More Wal-martification as corporations merge to sustain buying power and marketshare. Consumers, and EVERYONE working for those companies is hung out to dry. So it's not corporations that are the evil monsters, so much as a very small number of extremely selfish folks whose lives are meaningless without bringing misery and poverty to others and riches to themselves.

In a perfect world, the SEC would bar these known predators from acquiring any more companies. But our world is far, far from perfect and so instead we will see all banks merge, all markets merge, all department stores merge into one giant Walmart that does it all from car repairs and photo developing to clothes laundering and banking.

Capitalism will have been defeated internally and the USA will be just like the old communist regime - masses who are poor and a one-shop-serves-all-needs that will serve primarily the very few "elite". Even the rich are eventually shafted as their selection goes down to nothing and the quality of everything goes to heck in a handbasket.

It's the formula for the destruction of a great culture.