Category Archives: Private equity

Private Equity Slugfest! Managing Partner of Sequoia Slams Blackstone Chief Steve Schwarzman in New York Times Op Ed

Rifts are opening up among the financial elite. Michael Moritz, a partner from Sequoia Capital, penned a New York Times op-ed that blasts fellow private equity big dog Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone for cottoning up to Trump and for making his living from squeezing American workers and benefiting from the carried interest tax loophole, which […]

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CalPERS Tries to Hide Its Dirty Laundry, Threatens Most Effective Board Member: “Quit or Else”

CalPERS has managed to descend to a new low. Its strategy of trying to sweep fundamental problems under the rug has reached the point that the rug is not just lumpy but also starting to move. The latest shocker (and it is shocking) is that the board has launched a plan to strip JJ Jelincic, […]

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Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Seven: Uber’s “Narrative” and The Vox and Stratechery Critiques of Naked Capitalism’s Uber Series – Defending Uber Requires Ignoring Industry Economics

More discussion of defenses of Uber and how none of them deal with the economics of providing car ride services.

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The Obama Administration Bails Out Private Equity Landlords at the Expense of the Middle Class: Government Guarantees for Rental Securitization

So how much did Blackstone promise to give to the Obama library for this huge grift, um, parting gift? As regular readers may recall, private equity firms piled into buying foreclosed single family homes on the belief that if the government (in this case, Fannie and Freddie) was selling, they wanted to be buying. And […]

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How Experts Enable Corruption: The Role of Conflicted Lawyers at CalPERS and Other Public Pension Funds

As Trump is about to be sworn in, the press and pundits are agog about his and his fellow Cabinet members’ deep and extensive conflicts of interest, and how dangerous they is for democracy.1 But the hue and cry about conflicts of interest is late in coming. They’ve been tolerated more and more over time […]

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Yet Another Glaring Flaw With Trump Infrastructure Plan: Dependence on Vagaries of Tiny, Slow-Moving Tax Equity Market

The oh-so-clever Trump plan to use tax credits to fund infrastructure spending means it will be too small and slow to provide any real boost.

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Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Six: Latest Data Confirms Bleak P&L Performance While Stephen Levitt Makes Indefensible Consumer Welfare Claims

More on Uber’s questionable prospects and the dubious defenses offered by boosters, in this case, “Freakonomics” professor Stephen Levitt.

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