  We study a composition operation on monads, equivalently presented as large
equational theories. Specifically, we discuss the existence of tensors, which
are combinations of theories that impose mutual commutation of the operations
from the component theories. As such, they extend the sum of two theories,
which is just their unrestrained combination. Tensors of theories arise in
several contexts; in particular, in the semantics of programming languages, the
monad transformer for global state is given by a tensor. We present two main
results: we show that the tensor of two monads need not in general exist by
presenting two counterexamples, one of them involving finite powerset (i.e. the
theory of join semilattices); this solves a somewhat long-standing open
problem, and contrasts with recent results that had ruled out previously
expected counterexamples. On the other hand, we show that tensors with bounded
powerset monads do exist from countable powerset upwards.
