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I am afraid this is the predictable consequence of the Fed orchestrated monster credit bubble. These private equity players, through investment banking and other financial intermediaries are able to borrow close to the low Fed-orchestrated rate, while the companies they buy could not access the same cheap money, without which there is no basis for these deals. It was the "Age of the Financier" and every such age ended in mass misery. There is a reason all major religions prohibit usury, and in most traditional societies, making money on money is viewed with discomfort. After all, as the biblical story has it, Jesus chased the money changers from the temple.

The past 25+ years have been a mass redistribution of wealth towards the financial class, discouraging real capital accumulation in favor of playing games with money. This is not a free market at work, as some of these fraudulent "Wall Street Capitalists" would have you believe. Without an ever-accommodating Fed, , they would have been wiped out a long time ago.