Waubonsee Community College

These are the plunderers, how private equity runs--and wrecks--America, Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner

Label
These are the plunderers, how private equity runs--and wrecks--America, Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
Language
eng
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-383) and index
Illustrations
illustrationsplates
Index
index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
These are the plunderers
Nature of contents
bibliography
Oclc number
1379273212
Responsibility statement
Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
Sub title
how private equity runs--and wrecks--America
Summary
"Much has been written about the widening gulf between rich and poor in the United States, the pernicious effects our deepening income inequality has on the nation's well-being, and how our style of capitalism has failed to provide a living wage for so many Americans. But nothing has fully detailed the crucial role a small cohort of elite financiers has played in this dispiriting outcome over the past three decades. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Gretchen Morgenson, with coauthor Joshua Rosner, unmasks the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our nation's economy while enriching themselves: private equity. Private equity relies on debt-and lots of it. THE PLUNDER YEARS lucidly and maddeningly traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity's increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner, New York Times bestselling authors of RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT, investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, from Leon Black's Apollo to Stephen Schwarzman's Blackstone, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, then bleed them of assets and profits. These firms say they are saviors of troubled businesses, enhancing their operations to make them more efficient, better able to serve customers, and keep workers employed. But Morgenson and Rosner reveal how, with help from federal and state governments, private equity actually acquires healthy companies and funds the purchases-and their own instant repayments-with so much debt that it sickens the business. To meet the interest payments on the debt, the firms gut the acquired company through the sale of assets or businesses, then cut costs by laying off employees and reducing worker costs like healthcare and retirement benefits. After the financiers have extracted their profits, the companies often collapse in bankruptcy; in fact, fully 20% of companies taken over by private equity file for bankruptcy-10x the failure rate of other takeovers. Companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the financiers: patients are more likely to die; renters are more likely to be evicted; companies are more likely to go bankrupt; healthcare costs are higher at private equity-owned operations; private-equity backed newspapers are less likely to report on local issues, which leads to a decline in local election participation; retirees from private industry-as well as school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers-have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. THE PLUNDERERS investigates the greed in private equity and how its predatory practices gut industries, paychecks, and worsen the lives of everyday people. With a keen eye and astounding reporting, Morgenson and Rosner detail the many ways these billionaires have plundered our economy"--, Provided by publisher
Table Of Contents
Introduction: "Money-spinning machines": let the looting begin -- A note to readers -- "Pizza the hut": Leon Black and the art of the fleece -- "Greed is good": the plunderers come for the American middle class -- "Project savior": the politician who gave Leon Black his big start -- "I really need to understand what you do": one woman against the machine -- "The fire sale approach": how one of the greatest giveaways came about -- "No boy scout": plunder's many rewards -- "The real players": skating from the crime scene -- "Strong enough to stand on": savaging an American powerhouse called Samsonite -- "We have 2,500 families that depend on us getting it right": bleeding New Madrid, Missouri, dry -- "Capitalism on steroids": no lusher target than healthcare -- Call to action went unheeded: standing by while corporations practice medicine -- "Like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939": a special tax treatment that mints billionaires -- "Money for nothing": investigators home in on fleecers' fees and practices -- "Oppressing Indigenous people": bulldozing through our wetlands -- "Hiding in the background, rarely held to account": mining for Medicare gold -- "Special and symbiotic": Apollo goes back to its roots -- "No evidence of wrongdoing": Leon Black makes his exit -- Conclusion: Who will stop the bleeding?
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