Last month Apple raised $17bn in a bond issue. Not because it needs the money; the company currently has reserves of $145bn, and the eye-watering margins on its products generate cash at a rate that perhaps only a central bank can emulate. Apple is raising money because its money is in the wrong places and it would face tax bills if it repatriated the money to the US. The transaction illustrates a paradox in the modern relationship between business and finance. Companies have never had so little need for capital nor so much engagement with capital markets.

In the 19th century, railroads raised funds from private investors to finance costly infrastructure. Later, large manufacturing corporations raised capital in much the same way.

But only a few businesses today, mainly utilities, have the capital- intensive character typical of those early days of industrialisation. A railroad was a railroad, a brewery was a brewery, and these plants had no alternative uses. But now capital is much more fungible. The typical modern company operates from an office block, a shop or a shed, and it is now relatively unusual for a business to own the premises from which it operates. Employees today generally do not know who owns the building in which they work, or the desk at which they sit. They do not know because it does not matter. Their boss tells them what to do, not because he owns the means of production, but because he has been appointed as the boss.