Intelligence officials said the head of al-Qaida's operations in Afghanistan used a middleman to communicate with him.

VOA: special.2009.10.17

In other words, China is ideally placed to be the world's middleman: close enough to the frontier of innovation to keep up with the latest developments, and skilled at adapting new ideas for the mass market.

ECONOMIST: Schumpeter

By eliminating the middleman, he's able to undercut the competition by 200 percent, and with a superior product.

CNN: Review: Brilliant Washington powers 'Gangster'

As a middleman, Pallat's Unicover could reap a 7.5% fee of all the insurance it underwrote, while passing along almost all of the risk.

FORBES: Passing the Trash