Doesn't America's recent growth spurt have a lot to do with the assumption of rather unbelievably huge amounts of debt by America's leading corps at the end of last year for the purposes of business investment more so than m & a activity. I just threw away my old Wall Street Journals but there were some rather troubling numbers in the money and finance section in the last month or so. The problems with this debt driven investment are that the terms have not been good due to the on going credit crunch and that growth expectations are not strong for this year. Seems to be a deep overproduction crisis on the horizon. rb