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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9693463" data-attributes="member: 78087">Just finished Bad Company by Megan Greenwell, which is an excellent piece of reporting on the effects of private equity in four US sectors - retail, healthcare, journalism, and residential property. Greenwell does a very good job of telling the story of one example of each from the point of view of one key person over time. The story about healthcare (about the decline of a rural hospital in Riverton, Wyoming) struck a particularly personal note with me, since I was once closely involved in the cutting of hospital services in the U.K. under government austerity, but of course the picture in US healthcare under private equity is much worse, as noted by Dr Glaucomflecken among others.The story about residential property is the most disheartening, and the one with nothing resembling a happy ending (and bear in mind that the “happy ending” for retail - the example is Toys’R’Us - is private equity getting out of retail because it’s no longer profitable). Needless to say, the main point is that private equity shouldn’t be allowed to buy or run anything in the US, but also that they can’t be stopped from doing so and that the issue is mainly a generational one - private equity is driven by the need to deliver 10-20% annual growth for its shareholders, which are most commonly pension funds, and pension funds need those profits because they’re mostly massively in deficit, and so the system essentially sacrifices the health, housing, and employment of the young to ensure the old have enough funds in retirement.</blockquote>

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