Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
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Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#2Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#3Private equity firms seem like the villains many imagine investment bankers to be. Like, actually cracking the bones and sucking the marrow of the little guys in small businesses. Discharging pension obligations, offshoring, cutting corners.
But maybe that's an unfair point of view. Is there a steelman case to be made for PE?
I listened to https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl... but didn't come away with a rosier view of them.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#4Let them perish.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#5The unfortunate reality of PE is that regardless of your opinion of them, your money is probably tied to them.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#6Private equity firms seem like the villains many imagine investment bankers to be. Like, actually cracking the bones and sucking the marrow of the little guys in small businesses. Discharging pension obligations, offshoring, cutting corners. But maybe that's an unfair point of view. Is there a steelman case to be made for PE? I listened to https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-pl... but didn't com…
There are so many PE firms with such different practices that's it's difficult to make any generalized case for or against them. Ideally they provide liquidity for small business owners who want to sell and move on but lack other buyers. PE firms also do rescue many businesses that would have otherwise failed due to incompetent management or lack of capital: the mainstream press loves to hype up failures and abuses but seldom reports on successes.
Defined benefit pension plans shouldn't be a thing in the first place: they're too risky for workers, employers, and taxpayers alike. All pensions should be replaced with defined contribution plans like 401(k) where assets are safely held in individual named accounts.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#7Private equity hoovers up existing businesses that are mostly well functioning.
If they fail, we suffer as those businesses we depend upon fail and disappear. Everything from big national chains to your local doctors office can be destroyed in this way.
But if private equity succeeds, we also suffer.
Private equity is… private. Normal people have our savings invested in public markets. We can’t easily invest in private equity, and we shouldn’t because it’s too risky.
But imagine a world where every strong business goes private and only failing businesses are public. The wealthy take everything private so they don’t have to share the wealth.
IMO any business over a certain size should be forced to be public and no option to go private again.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#8The people that are proprietors of these institutions count for less than 1% of the social economy in a large state where guns are legal.
Please keep being greedy. You know where this is going.
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#9I mean, they miscalculated valuations. Who else would eat losses but them?
Re: Private equity is sitting on $5T of existential dread
#10The unfortunate reality of PE is that regardless of your opinion of them, your money is probably tied to them.
Seems like that’s literally not true considering that most people can only invest in public exchange tradeable funds.