Nearly three years later and after a timely cash infusion from Warren Buffett, GE Capital is a money machine again.

FORBES: Planes, Trains, Pipes And Loans: GE's Diversified Portfolio Delivers

The biggest asset he bequeathed, in retrospect: a track record that turned Bain Capital into a fundraising machine, as pension funds, endowments and rich families sought to capture some of those dazzling returns.

FORBES: The Truth About Bain: Inside The House That Mitt Built

Financial markets are supposed to be a machine for amassing capital and determining who gets to use it and for what.

ECONOMIST: Greed��and fear

In manufacturing, innovations such as programmable machine tools make capital equipment more flexible, creating a demand for more flexible human capital, too.

ECONOMIST: Why pay is becoming less equal

Whereas the PRI is planning to field Beatriz Paredes, a well-known figure with close ties to her party's machine in the capital, the PRD has struggled to unite behind a strong candidate.

ECONOMIST: Mexican politics: Left in the lurch | The

The government's strategy has been to treat imports of capital goods, such as machine tools, relatively generously (to help Kia and its peers improve their manufacturing), while clamping down on imports of western consumer goods, such as cars.

ECONOMIST: South Korea��s firms

In contrast, its competitor General Electric reallocated capital from commodity plays that had paid in the 1970s to new real enterprises like magnetic resonance machine-manufacturing, betting that discretionary income for health care was going to soar with the coming rise in affluence.

FORBES: Here's To Mitt Romney, The Corporate Turnaround Artist

On Tuesday its spin machine was working hard to send the message that it didn't need to raise capital but could if it wanted to, and it might do just that, but not because more capital was required.

FORBES: Lehman Doesn't Need The Money

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spanish police vehicles topped with machine guns were standing guard outside the American, British and Israeli embassies in the Spanish capital as security was beefed up ahead of the likely war in Iraq, CNN observed Wednesday.

CNN: Spain steps up embassy security

The dials on these three innovations are sensitive, but if set in a recurring circle -- with empowering innovations creating more jobs than efficiency innovations eliminate, and the capital that efficiency innovations liberate being invested back into empowering innovations -- the economy is a magnificent machine.

CNN: Christensen: We are living the capitalist's dilemma