2023-11-16
51 分钟They say they make companies more efficient through savvy management. Critics say they bend the rules to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and employees. Can they both be right? (Probably not.)
This is a story about what some people call piracy.
These people, with only dollar signs as their goal, plundered something really wonderful.
And where is this so called piracy happening?
It's everywhere.
It is possibly your kids schools, could be your employer, could be the mortgage on your house, missile defense systems.
It's everywhere.
The people who run these operations say they're misunderstood and that what they are doing is good for society.
Others disagree.
I suppose if I thought that it was good for society, I wouldn't have called the book plunder.
Today on free economics radio, the rise and rise of the private equity industry.
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.
Ok, our first guest today has an interesting job.
My name is Brendan Ballou, and I'm a special counsel at the Department of Justice.
Baloo is a prosecutor in the antitrust division of the DOJ.
A few years back, he noticed something.
When companies propose to buy big companies, they have to file documents with the Department of Justice Antitrust division and with the FTC.
I was looking at those documents, and I was seeing all these acquisitions that were coming in, and they were all companies that are being bought by institutions that I had never heard of.
Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, Apollo.
I'd never heard of these.
And so I started looking into it and started to learn about the idea of private equity.