Fully 20% of American business is now controlled by private equity, which is draining billions out of our economy every week to stash in the money bins of its morbidly rich owners...
Too esoteric for American voters. Another version of how we are frogs being slowly boiled to death, not realizing it until it’s too late. My guess is that the morbidly rich will block corrective legislation or adequate regulatory action by the SEC and other relevant agencies. I say this having had as a good law school friend someone who “retired” from a prestigious law practice and then joined Bain Capital. His father was a steelworker. He became an utterly ruthless capitalist. As did a number of my other classmates. Unfettered capitalism and addictive greed are antithetical to democracy, representative or otherwise. If we had enough intelligent, decent humans, I would much prefer a more socialistic system with serious income redistribution. Because we do not, our system will have to reach a crisis point, if we are not already there, where the only “solution” will be a massive, bloody revolution/ disruption, with no guarantee anything better will emerge,except possibly a sharp reduction in the number of humans plundering the planet. A bleak outlook, I know. But I see too little good will among us to think otherwise.
Excellent explanation of how private equity firms grow monopolies and pick the winners and losers. They get in, make the companies take out the loans to pay them back, sell their assets, and all along the way they drain the cash available for bogus fees.
Looked-up the difference between this scum and the hedge funds. From Google attributed to Forage: "Investments made by hedge funds are short-term, meaning investors can see returns quickly. On the other hand, private equity firms often make long-term investments, and investors may wait years before seeing returns."
Just remember folks, it's nothing personal---it's just business. That is until it involves your beloved pet.
Elizabeth Warren is the best reformed Republican EVER! She still loves capitalism, but fully understands it doesn't always love back. Kudos to Sen. Baldwin, Sen. Brown, Rep. Pocan, and Rep. Jayapal; the Dems are sending some good people to Congress, and we don't say that enough. Probably should call their offices!
Thom Hartmann should get the Investigative Journalism Award from the American Patriots' Association (all made-up out of thin air, just like Private Equity and Hedge Funds). This article should be run in the WSJ, NYT, and WAPO, among others, if they haven't already been taken over by Private Equity and Hedge Funds. Let's see how climate collapse (now ongoing) effects their bottom lines, McMansions, mega-Yachts, vacation home (s), children's educations and prospects for a happy future. There is a God and He/She is watching, and waiting. Nature bats last.
As I have said throughout my life about dreams, whether it be the Martin Luther King's, the "American" one, "Dreamers," etc. The requisite state for dreaming is being asleep in the first goddamned place. The horrific state of affairs you so eloquently articulate (especially the veterinary hospital example) is replicated in every nook and cranny of this pathetic society and the only way it got to this point of no return is because of a slumbering populus.
You know the homeless encampments in every town, Rohn? All those fentanyl deaths and addiction? The nightmare has left the hood and made itself at home everywhere. "We", and I mean ALL of us, are getting a taste.
My two-little-town area with a population of 26,000 has both city councils, non-profits, and law-enforcement working on it. They are trying to be kinder and gentler. It only took 400 years of mean and stupid to get here, and I know most of us will never comprehend all the suffering along the way.
Rohn, we humans must have hope for a better tomorrow. Without dreams or hope or altruism, there is nothing to live for except to be worked to death for low wages or die in battle or be used as a breeder.
BeeJay. I give less than a damn if I agree with you, or not. I admire you because you are always respectful and, concurrence or not, always make intelligent comments.
Perhaps (like MEL, not Nel, Carter) you can just THRILL the living shit out of me and say something stoopid from time to time (we'll keep our private joke to ourselves).
Unfortunately our pets have no doubt suffered the the same way people have in this country. Many cannot afford a doc, dentist or a vet. I am truly ashamed of the medical industry and the insurance system in this country. Providers and patients are constantly at the mercy of both AND big pharma.
I just watched "Ordinary Angels", a dramatization of a true story about very sick child. This is the only first world nation that makes some lose it all and literally beg for their loved one's medical care and life. Each of us have seen one of those situations first hand.
Big, bad, tough Kristi Noem still doesn't get it. Good grief, she doubled-down on her stupidity with all her interviews. So far, that only works for Trump and his cult members.
Private equity has taken over 20% of the economy!? Healthcare is costing us 18% of it. Republican ideology is killing people, pets, and the economy!
I'm dealing with the vet clinic issue today. My dog needs critical care today, but two of the vets don't work on Monday or Tuesday. The vet who helped my dog is considering opening their own clinic; maybe because this clinic was bought out earlier. Honest politicians at the top seem to be our only hope against chaos.
People who represent creditors in bankruptcy often describe the law as "legalized theft." Consider the employees and suppliers, contractors, subcontractors etc. All are usually "screwees" in that if they are lucky, they get a fraction of their debit. In many cases, the phenomenon that Thom is describing, starts a ripple effect and those employees and suppliers, contractors, subcontractors etc. have to seek bankruptcy protection.
A judge in bankruptcy has the capacity to act as a hypothetical lien creditor and knock out "preferential transfers" usually 90 days prior to filing.
Want to flip MAGATS? Head to bankruptcy court. Give them Thom's article and ask if it sounds familiar.
BTW most of the debtors are there due to medical bills. Also inchoate Democrats.
In a little publicized study titled The Dark Side of Hedge Fund Activism: Evidence from Employee Pension Plans economists Anup Agrawal and Yuri Lim conclude that the profitability from private equity is not by management fees, but by underfunding, worker pensions, then putting the company in bankruptcy. The workers lose their pensions and have to claim against the federal pension fund. https://fmaconferences.org/SanDiego/Papers/Dark_Activism.pdf
The worst part is that the money managers of many worker pension funds invest in private equity. And they are not good investments. While pension funds have paid billions in fees to PE managers, the PE returns have been no better than if the funds had been invested in minimum fee index funds. That according to research by Oxford professor Ludovic Phalippou in a paper entitled An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & The Billionaire Factory. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3623820
Job sucking machine they truly are. Democracy requires the politicians are makers of a level playing field with rules that everyone plays by. Equity is how to spread the wealth for the benefit of the most not the few. Taxing business at or above 50%. I like FDR's 94% as it does the best job which changes their behavior to invest in companies and not to raid them for personal gain. We know all the other Thom fix for the rest. We all need a mixed economy well regulated for the benefit of everyone.
Brendan Ballou’s book is well worth a read and is very understandable.
A few reforms would bend the curve rather quickly.
• One is for states to make it easier to unwind the shell company structures used by private equity and hold the primary investor accountable for the damage inflicted.
• The other is close the carried interest loophole allowing a massive tax break to private equity investors.
• The last is to fully tax deferred compensation in the year granted and subject all deferred compensation for executives fully to FICA.
Ditto, the more we learn the more we realize what a quagmire we are in! I really think Tom's listeners and readers along with Robert Reich s or some of the most intelligent people in America and the fascists would like to silence all of us!
I noticed a lot of those companies disappearing. I loved Rockport shoes for instance. I have heard the term "vulture capitalists" bandied about, but seemingly as a joke. Has anyone here heard of Patrick Lovell? He produced a series called The Con, about the 2008 "recession" caused by mortgagers selling very questionable debt after deliberately signing up those debtors. I'd appreciate any input from Hartman readers regarding Lovell's proposals.
"Corporations are people, my friend" (according to vulture capitalist/presidential candidate Romney) and as long as money is speech the oligarchs of capital will continue to get their way. End the powers of corporate personhood or it will only get worse.
Steward Health Care System recently filed bankruptcy. Private equity is part of their story. Over 460 hospitals are now owned by private equity. This will snowball. Stay healthy .healthy. Thanks for the story. Thom is an excellent teacher. We recently spent $330 fot our long hair Chihuahua to get ampicillin for a urinary tract infection because it didn't become apparent until Saturday morning. She wasn't drinking water and had symptoms that couldn't wait until Monday so our only option was the emergency vet. A man entered the office while we waited, carrying a dog that he had hit with his car. He was told like everyone else that they wouldn't see the injured dog without $150 upfront minimum. The man urgently agreed. I felt disgusted, just as when a child in pain must wait to be seen until the mother produces her insurance information in Urgent care.
My dog started getting progressively sick over period of one week we took him to the vet on Friday and he said he couldn't do anything until Monday because they were closed for the weekend. He suggested if my dog got worse to take him to the local vet hospital. Well my dog got very ill to the point where he was just crying with pain. We took him to the hospital and the first thing they did was they took our credit card for $2,000. It's pretty crazy but we love the Little Tike so we gave them the card. We fully expected to get a good portion of that $2,000 back. We got called in and the vet said our dog is very sick it's going to take the $2,000 that we already gave them and possibly another 4 to $6,000 to keep him alive. Now here's a catch they want our credit card for that too just in case. Before we put out the credit card for that much money we wanted to know what exactly was going on with her puppy. They said that he had a number of internal things going on they don't know exactly everything yet but the dog was diabetic. Okay I said what does it take to handle the diabetes with my dog. We knew he would have to have shots every day. How much I asked, are the shots going to cost us per month.
The answer surprised me. The vet said she didn't know. She had no idea what the medication would cost. As you can imagine my mind started spinning not knowing what the hell else to do.
I kept asking about how she could not know what it would cost to give the dog insulin shots every day if she was a vet at a Veterinary Hospital. Not only didn't she know and as far as I could tell she didn't care that much. She was just there doing a job. Since we couldn't afford another $4,000 or more to keep our puppy alive we decided that he had to be put to sleep. That hurt my wife and I quite a bit but we didn't have much of a choice. To this very day I am angry about this idiot vet not even knowing what shots for diabetes would cost per month and leaving us with no predictability and no way to make it actual decision about our dog. All we know was that this vet took $2,000 out of our pocket because they had the dog there for 2 hours and then wanted another 4 to $6,000 to help the dog without knowing how much it was going to cost us every single month for the diabetes portion of this dog's health. I'm still totally angry today. After reading Tom's article I did check on this Veterinary Hospital. Guess what?It filed bankruptcy and went out of business
Can you imagine? They're charging between 2 and 8,000 for that hospital stay and then they're filing bankruptcy. I don't know for a fact whether this vet hospital was a victim of this Venture Capital scam but I bet it was. Maybe when we take a look at crime and crime rate in this country we should look at how many people are forced into making very bad decisions because they are being cheated so much and stolen from by these venture capitalist idiots. Anyone, I mean anyone, voting for an American fascist, formerly a Republican, for president should be taken out and shot like fascist governor, formerly Republican, Noems' dog.
That's horrible! I'm so sorry you lost your dog that way. I just read that some hospitals are requiring to be paid in full before doing surgeries on people. You have a right to be angry. We should all be very angry.
Mr. Hartmann, your analogy of the house-purchase by a private equity firm is excellent. It is hard to believe that such business organizations are legally permitted. But they are.
May I suggest a clear explanation of private equity, with examples: THESE ARE THE PLUNDERERS by Gretchen Morgenson, Simon and Schuster 2023.
Too esoteric for American voters. Another version of how we are frogs being slowly boiled to death, not realizing it until it’s too late. My guess is that the morbidly rich will block corrective legislation or adequate regulatory action by the SEC and other relevant agencies. I say this having had as a good law school friend someone who “retired” from a prestigious law practice and then joined Bain Capital. His father was a steelworker. He became an utterly ruthless capitalist. As did a number of my other classmates. Unfettered capitalism and addictive greed are antithetical to democracy, representative or otherwise. If we had enough intelligent, decent humans, I would much prefer a more socialistic system with serious income redistribution. Because we do not, our system will have to reach a crisis point, if we are not already there, where the only “solution” will be a massive, bloody revolution/ disruption, with no guarantee anything better will emerge,except possibly a sharp reduction in the number of humans plundering the planet. A bleak outlook, I know. But I see too little good will among us to think otherwise.
I. Feel. Smarter.
Excellent explanation of how private equity firms grow monopolies and pick the winners and losers. They get in, make the companies take out the loans to pay them back, sell their assets, and all along the way they drain the cash available for bogus fees.
Looked-up the difference between this scum and the hedge funds. From Google attributed to Forage: "Investments made by hedge funds are short-term, meaning investors can see returns quickly. On the other hand, private equity firms often make long-term investments, and investors may wait years before seeing returns."
Just remember folks, it's nothing personal---it's just business. That is until it involves your beloved pet.
Elizabeth Warren is the best reformed Republican EVER! She still loves capitalism, but fully understands it doesn't always love back. Kudos to Sen. Baldwin, Sen. Brown, Rep. Pocan, and Rep. Jayapal; the Dems are sending some good people to Congress, and we don't say that enough. Probably should call their offices!
Thom Hartmann should get the Investigative Journalism Award from the American Patriots' Association (all made-up out of thin air, just like Private Equity and Hedge Funds). This article should be run in the WSJ, NYT, and WAPO, among others, if they haven't already been taken over by Private Equity and Hedge Funds. Let's see how climate collapse (now ongoing) effects their bottom lines, McMansions, mega-Yachts, vacation home (s), children's educations and prospects for a happy future. There is a God and He/She is watching, and waiting. Nature bats last.
THIS is the "American Dream," is it not?
As I have said throughout my life about dreams, whether it be the Martin Luther King's, the "American" one, "Dreamers," etc. The requisite state for dreaming is being asleep in the first goddamned place. The horrific state of affairs you so eloquently articulate (especially the veterinary hospital example) is replicated in every nook and cranny of this pathetic society and the only way it got to this point of no return is because of a slumbering populus.
Gotta be sleep for nightmares, too.
You know the homeless encampments in every town, Rohn? All those fentanyl deaths and addiction? The nightmare has left the hood and made itself at home everywhere. "We", and I mean ALL of us, are getting a taste.
My two-little-town area with a population of 26,000 has both city councils, non-profits, and law-enforcement working on it. They are trying to be kinder and gentler. It only took 400 years of mean and stupid to get here, and I know most of us will never comprehend all the suffering along the way.
Keep talking---people ARE listening.
I can do either nothing, or say I tried.
What a beautiful, beautiful comment.
Rohn, we humans must have hope for a better tomorrow. Without dreams or hope or altruism, there is nothing to live for except to be worked to death for low wages or die in battle or be used as a breeder.
BeeJay. I give less than a damn if I agree with you, or not. I admire you because you are always respectful and, concurrence or not, always make intelligent comments.
Perhaps (like MEL, not Nel, Carter) you can just THRILL the living shit out of me and say something stoopid from time to time (we'll keep our private joke to ourselves).
Pweeze, pweeze, oh pretty pweeze?
Unfortunately our pets have no doubt suffered the the same way people have in this country. Many cannot afford a doc, dentist or a vet. I am truly ashamed of the medical industry and the insurance system in this country. Providers and patients are constantly at the mercy of both AND big pharma.
I just watched "Ordinary Angels", a dramatization of a true story about very sick child. This is the only first world nation that makes some lose it all and literally beg for their loved one's medical care and life. Each of us have seen one of those situations first hand.
Big, bad, tough Kristi Noem still doesn't get it. Good grief, she doubled-down on her stupidity with all her interviews. So far, that only works for Trump and his cult members.
Private equity has taken over 20% of the economy!? Healthcare is costing us 18% of it. Republican ideology is killing people, pets, and the economy!
I'm dealing with the vet clinic issue today. My dog needs critical care today, but two of the vets don't work on Monday or Tuesday. The vet who helped my dog is considering opening their own clinic; maybe because this clinic was bought out earlier. Honest politicians at the top seem to be our only hope against chaos.
People who represent creditors in bankruptcy often describe the law as "legalized theft." Consider the employees and suppliers, contractors, subcontractors etc. All are usually "screwees" in that if they are lucky, they get a fraction of their debit. In many cases, the phenomenon that Thom is describing, starts a ripple effect and those employees and suppliers, contractors, subcontractors etc. have to seek bankruptcy protection.
A judge in bankruptcy has the capacity to act as a hypothetical lien creditor and knock out "preferential transfers" usually 90 days prior to filing.
Want to flip MAGATS? Head to bankruptcy court. Give them Thom's article and ask if it sounds familiar.
BTW most of the debtors are there due to medical bills. Also inchoate Democrats.
In a little publicized study titled The Dark Side of Hedge Fund Activism: Evidence from Employee Pension Plans economists Anup Agrawal and Yuri Lim conclude that the profitability from private equity is not by management fees, but by underfunding, worker pensions, then putting the company in bankruptcy. The workers lose their pensions and have to claim against the federal pension fund. https://fmaconferences.org/SanDiego/Papers/Dark_Activism.pdf
The worst part is that the money managers of many worker pension funds invest in private equity. And they are not good investments. While pension funds have paid billions in fees to PE managers, the PE returns have been no better than if the funds had been invested in minimum fee index funds. That according to research by Oxford professor Ludovic Phalippou in a paper entitled An Inconvenient Fact: Private Equity Returns & The Billionaire Factory. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3623820
Thanks for the reference ... here's another article about gim:
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2cr4z1fwlg1hjjz0pbpq8/corner-office/how-ludovic-phalippou-became-the-bete-noire-of-private-equity?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Job sucking machine they truly are. Democracy requires the politicians are makers of a level playing field with rules that everyone plays by. Equity is how to spread the wealth for the benefit of the most not the few. Taxing business at or above 50%. I like FDR's 94% as it does the best job which changes their behavior to invest in companies and not to raid them for personal gain. We know all the other Thom fix for the rest. We all need a mixed economy well regulated for the benefit of everyone.
Brendan Ballou’s book is well worth a read and is very understandable.
A few reforms would bend the curve rather quickly.
• One is for states to make it easier to unwind the shell company structures used by private equity and hold the primary investor accountable for the damage inflicted.
• The other is close the carried interest loophole allowing a massive tax break to private equity investors.
• The last is to fully tax deferred compensation in the year granted and subject all deferred compensation for executives fully to FICA.
Thom Hartmann, I have nothing intelligent to add to this.
Everything I start to type just ends with "How is this shit even REAL".
And "How come nobody told me this SHIT".
Don't even need to scrape anymore, just bump the surface and a mess of parasitic vulgarity belches out.
Ditto, the more we learn the more we realize what a quagmire we are in! I really think Tom's listeners and readers along with Robert Reich s or some of the most intelligent people in America and the fascists would like to silence all of us!
I noticed a lot of those companies disappearing. I loved Rockport shoes for instance. I have heard the term "vulture capitalists" bandied about, but seemingly as a joke. Has anyone here heard of Patrick Lovell? He produced a series called The Con, about the 2008 "recession" caused by mortgagers selling very questionable debt after deliberately signing up those debtors. I'd appreciate any input from Hartman readers regarding Lovell's proposals.
Bullseye! Right down to the puppy.
I agree. This is best analogy I've read that helps to explain private equity, and how it's destroying us. It's akin to a flesh-eating bacteria.
"Corporations are people, my friend" (according to vulture capitalist/presidential candidate Romney) and as long as money is speech the oligarchs of capital will continue to get their way. End the powers of corporate personhood or it will only get worse.
Steward Health Care System recently filed bankruptcy. Private equity is part of their story. Over 460 hospitals are now owned by private equity. This will snowball. Stay healthy .healthy. Thanks for the story. Thom is an excellent teacher. We recently spent $330 fot our long hair Chihuahua to get ampicillin for a urinary tract infection because it didn't become apparent until Saturday morning. She wasn't drinking water and had symptoms that couldn't wait until Monday so our only option was the emergency vet. A man entered the office while we waited, carrying a dog that he had hit with his car. He was told like everyone else that they wouldn't see the injured dog without $150 upfront minimum. The man urgently agreed. I felt disgusted, just as when a child in pain must wait to be seen until the mother produces her insurance information in Urgent care.
My dog started getting progressively sick over period of one week we took him to the vet on Friday and he said he couldn't do anything until Monday because they were closed for the weekend. He suggested if my dog got worse to take him to the local vet hospital. Well my dog got very ill to the point where he was just crying with pain. We took him to the hospital and the first thing they did was they took our credit card for $2,000. It's pretty crazy but we love the Little Tike so we gave them the card. We fully expected to get a good portion of that $2,000 back. We got called in and the vet said our dog is very sick it's going to take the $2,000 that we already gave them and possibly another 4 to $6,000 to keep him alive. Now here's a catch they want our credit card for that too just in case. Before we put out the credit card for that much money we wanted to know what exactly was going on with her puppy. They said that he had a number of internal things going on they don't know exactly everything yet but the dog was diabetic. Okay I said what does it take to handle the diabetes with my dog. We knew he would have to have shots every day. How much I asked, are the shots going to cost us per month.
The answer surprised me. The vet said she didn't know. She had no idea what the medication would cost. As you can imagine my mind started spinning not knowing what the hell else to do.
I kept asking about how she could not know what it would cost to give the dog insulin shots every day if she was a vet at a Veterinary Hospital. Not only didn't she know and as far as I could tell she didn't care that much. She was just there doing a job. Since we couldn't afford another $4,000 or more to keep our puppy alive we decided that he had to be put to sleep. That hurt my wife and I quite a bit but we didn't have much of a choice. To this very day I am angry about this idiot vet not even knowing what shots for diabetes would cost per month and leaving us with no predictability and no way to make it actual decision about our dog. All we know was that this vet took $2,000 out of our pocket because they had the dog there for 2 hours and then wanted another 4 to $6,000 to help the dog without knowing how much it was going to cost us every single month for the diabetes portion of this dog's health. I'm still totally angry today. After reading Tom's article I did check on this Veterinary Hospital. Guess what?It filed bankruptcy and went out of business
Can you imagine? They're charging between 2 and 8,000 for that hospital stay and then they're filing bankruptcy. I don't know for a fact whether this vet hospital was a victim of this Venture Capital scam but I bet it was. Maybe when we take a look at crime and crime rate in this country we should look at how many people are forced into making very bad decisions because they are being cheated so much and stolen from by these venture capitalist idiots. Anyone, I mean anyone, voting for an American fascist, formerly a Republican, for president should be taken out and shot like fascist governor, formerly Republican, Noems' dog.
That's horrible! I'm so sorry you lost your dog that way. I just read that some hospitals are requiring to be paid in full before doing surgeries on people. You have a right to be angry. We should all be very angry.
Mr. Hartmann, your analogy of the house-purchase by a private equity firm is excellent. It is hard to believe that such business organizations are legally permitted. But they are.
May I suggest a clear explanation of private equity, with examples: THESE ARE THE PLUNDERERS by Gretchen Morgenson, Simon and Schuster 2023.