Saturday, March 5, 2016

PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS’ INFLUENCE

“The whole subject of private equity has been woefully undercovered. Firms like Carlyle [Group], Blackstone, and KKR have been the main force behind the flood of mergers and acquisitions of recent years. News accounts have focused far more on the market effects of these deals than on their implications for employment, the concentration of wealth, and community welfare. Back in 2012, such factors were closely analyzed in
co
nnection with Mitt Romney's work at the private equity company Bain Capital, but since then interest in
private equity has waned even as the field has boomed. Naked Capitalism. an influential financial blog, recently [2015] a long post about how private equity companies are far more obviously connected to an undue concentration of wealth at the expense of workers and communitiesthan are CDOs (collaterized debt obligations) and the other finance instruments that once drew such attention. Though the top one percent
of the one percent "consists disproportionately of private equity and hedge fund principals,’ the blog ruefully
lamented, few of its readers seem interested. The same could be said of the press.”


Massing, Michael, ‘How to Cover the One Percent,’ The New York Review, January 14, 2016, pp: 74-76.