She did a good job of researching the chronology of leveraged buyouts that were inflicted on Simmons, and as a reporter rather than a columnist she is not supposed to come right out and call this corporate rape. Still, you read the article and come away thinking "Oh my God - how can this happen"? This is the reaction the business journalists should have had 10 years ago when this stuff was beginning to heat up. The outrage should have been reported each and every time Simmons was bought and sold. There should have been even more outrage every time one of these leveraged buyout firms loaded on more debt to a company and then promptly took it out as a dividend. Where was the outrage two years ago when Burger King's LBO owners saddled it with a huge debt and then took out $500 million in dividends as their personal payment. Instead what we got was an article touting the big bonuses the LBO kings had that year - never once questioning where this money came from, and always implying these brilliant men somehow earned these payouts from their insight, timing, and management skills.

So how come our business press failed to scream "rape!" over and over again? You had to dig deep into the blogosphere to read anything that described accurately what was going on.

The "investors" and their advisers had every intention of defaulting on the mortgages or bonds used to buy the business, because they knew the business could not support the debt load.