The ability of top management to walk out of companies with huge fortunes is no new capacity, but an old capacity regained, combined with the separation of formal ownership and executive control that underlay the 1920's Wall Street stock market boom.

I have no idea why 1850's Manchester textile companies would be considered state of the art for 1850's corporate development, when so much of the development of the corporate form and the separation of formal ownership and executive control is occurring in the railroadification of the US.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.