[dragonwriter]

> Is it a terrible thing that massive amounts of money can't be promised and taxed? If that kind of lending is in fact good business(I'm not convinced it is) Couldn't the same loan be made through multiple smaller share holders?

Sure, in fact, the same loan probably will be with the existing system. Large (hundreds of millions of USD) bond offerings to the public, from either a state agencies or private firms don't end up with only one purchaser in many cases, even if they have a big financial firm facilitating the offering.

The question is how do alternative mechanisms do this as well or better?