One way of doing that is to provide an exemption from capital-gains taxation on all debt or equity instruments used in the next six months to invest in the troubled auto makers.

WSJ: Let's Cut Cap-Gains Taxes on Auto Investments

While it is comfortable with wealth creation and the need for speculation in economic markets, it has nothing to say about financial instruments and models such as private equity, hedge funds or other forms of monetary capitalization.

WSJ: Aryeh Spero: What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism

These have since been plumped, but with hybrid instruments that do not count as pure equity.

ECONOMIST: A new chapter for the world economy, maybe

Two years ago, Micron bought (with equity) the memory-chip operations of Texas Instruments, an American rival.

ECONOMIST: Semiconductors: America, memory-chip Lazarus | The

The iShares Barclays 3-5Yr Treasury Bond (IEI) ETF is up 1.48% since Aug. 8 as investors piled into the ETF for safety, driving up the price of the equity but definitely not driving up the yield of the underlying instruments.

FORBES: Best Performing Emerging Market ETFs Since Aug. 8 Decline

That's a nice way of saying that during recent years the Harvard Management Company, the university's investment subsidiary, diverted large portions of the university's endowment assets out of safe but poky low-yield securities (as of last June fixed-income investments accounted for only 16% of Harvard's portfolio) and into what this Forbes story describes as "exotic financial instruments": derivatives, hedge funds, private equity partnerships, commodities and emerging-market equities.

FORBES: How Harvard Should Handle Its Endowment

In current economic times when an investor is lucky to get a 1.25% return on a one year CD, many equity investors are turning toward dividend paying stocks and other higher yielding instruments.

FORBES: Juicy and Junky High Yield ETFs

Clearly companies like Comcast and GE, are mindful of that reality in an environment where investors look to the equity market for yield due to the paltry rates on many fixed-income instruments like U.S. Treasuries.

FORBES: With All Eyes On Apple's Cash Hoard, GE, Comcast And Others Share The Wealth