I would gladly tolerate incivility in return for moderation and accuracy..

But what if you only want to buy $10,000 worth of common stock? You could spend hours in the library tracing the history or go on line. But would you find out what corporation really owns HomeDepot?

You could find out even if you didn't buy stock, because public corporations must be publicly registered.

Can I bring the discussion to Non American problems and solutions. An EU meeting fail to agree on a bail out in Europe. However Ireland, Greece and Germany have already agree to gurantee private bank deposits. This is a form of subisy because it is not the banks dong this.

This in turn has cause a run on banks of countries who did not make this guarntee as people move their deposits to countries which have this guarntee. Soon all European countries will have to do the same.

Some banks including Germany second bank havt been nationalised. This is a better solution than just buying their debts.

On the point of protection. This does limit competition but sometimes is essential to keep a local industry going. Most countries have restriction of routes for foreign carriers to protect their national airline. I am not sure of the position in the USA but our government does restrict foreign airlines on the Australia-USA route.

Protection is not always good , and Australia is a Free Trade country in most things like agriculture but sometimes protection is needed in specific industries.

buying $10K worth of common stock won't bring down the system, nor create a monopoly. It's when you want to buy ALL the common stock (or at least 51%) of a company similar to the one you mentioned AND you own a rival chain is when the problems start. At that point, leveraging off your increasing assets base, you then go and buy ALL the hardware chains in the US and (work with me here) the world and all the (say) nail manufacturing plants. You can then charge what you want for a nail, if all nails are $10 each (say) in your hardware chain and you have no competitors: monopoly

You grow rich at the expense of the people. That's what Capitalism's ultimate goal is - monopoly. That's why Govt. regulates very strictly re super-mergers and takeovers.