WALL STREET PHILANTHROPISTS

[On August 23, 2011, an earthquake shook the Washington Monument. One of the two strongest quakes ever recorded east of the Rockies, it fractured two dozen of the stone protrusions that hold up the marble slabs at the monument’s peak. Within weeks, David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, announced that he would provide the funds. Rubenstein, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, is one of the wealthiest people in Washington.]

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“Many of today’s Wall Street philanthropists win the public’s esteem by giving away money that, without the [carried interest] loophole they’ve fought to protect, would not all have been theirs to donate. ‘I don’t want to bash the philanthropy, because it does good,’ Victor Fleischer told me. ‘But we’re creating what’s essentially a parallel system, where a small number of individuals control quasi-public spending, and that will reflect their values and not democratic values.’ Of Rubenstein, he said, ‘It’s great that he’s helping out with the Washington Monument. But, if we had a government that was better funded, it could probably fix its own monuments.’ ♦

Alec MacGillis, “The Billionaires’ Loophole,” New Yorker, March 14, 2016, pp: 64-73.