WE HAVE BECOME ACCUSTOMED to seeing their major industries changing before our very eyes. For investment bankers, these restructurings produce a fee bonanza that sends the prices of New York condominiums soaring, and puts smiles on the faces of Porsche dealers, as thirty-something masters of the universe share their new-found wealth.

The good news is that the investment bankers are not the only beneficiaries of the over-$100 billion in mega-deals that have been done so far this year. Consumers also gain from what that great economist, Joseph Schumpeter, called the gale of creative destruction.