Merge, Purge, The Same Old Dirge

You hear it all the time:

'We don't make anything in this country anymore.'

So ask yourself what new goods could have been manufactured, what startups could have begun, what real jobs could have been created with the $96 billion worth of investment capital wasted on the two big communications' industry mergers recently announced - - AT&T scooping up DirecTV and Comcast swallowing TimeWarner.

Sure - - mergers are paydays for the bankers and the lawyers who put the deals together, and some insiders are going to parachute away with bonuses and perks.

Some stockholders are going to enjoy a nice capital gain and the government might even collect some taxes.

But close to $100 billion is being eaten up in just two deals, and whatever benefits that might trickle out will be washed away by the increased rates for consumer services provided by the surviving entities to pay down the mergers' financing.

And who thinks that in a year or two or three the net employment at the surviving firms will exceed the totals at the four companies now?