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These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the insidious world of private equity in this “masterpiece of investigative journalism” (Christopher Leonard, bestselling author of Kochland)—revealing how it puts our entire economy and us at risk.
Much has been written about the widening gulf between rich and poor and how our style of capitalism has failed to provide a living wage for so many Americans. But nothing has fully detailed the outsized role a small cohort of elite financiers has played in this inequality. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Gretchen Morgenson, with coauthor Joshua Rosner, unmask the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers, and their government enablers, who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our nation’s economy for their own private equity.
These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by.
The authors show how companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the employees are more likely to lose their jobs or their benefits; companies are more likely to go bankrupt; patients are more likely to have higher healthcare costs; residents of nursing homes are more likely to die faster; towns struggle when private equity buys their main businesses, crippling the local economy; and school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers are more likely to have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. In other we are all worse off because of private equity.
These Are the Plunderers is a “meticulous and devastating takedown of a powerful force in Western capitalism” (Brad Stone, bestselling author of Amazon Unbound) that exposes the greed and pillaging in private equity, revealing the many ways these billionaires have bled the economy, and, in turn, us.
Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the insidious world of private equity in this “masterpiece of investigative journalism” (Christopher Leonard, bestselling author of Kochland)—revealing how it puts our entire economy and us at risk.
Much has been written about the widening gulf between rich and poor and how our style of capitalism has failed to provide a living wage for so many Americans. But nothing has fully detailed the outsized role a small cohort of elite financiers has played in this inequality. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Gretchen Morgenson, with coauthor Joshua Rosner, unmask the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers, and their government enablers, who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our nation’s economy for their own private equity.
These Are the Plunderers traces the thirty-year history of corporate takeovers in America and private equity’s increasing dominance. Morgenson and Rosner investigate some of the biggest names in private equity, exposing how they buy companies, load them with debt, and then bleed them of assets and profits. All while prosecutors and regulators stand idly by.
The authors show how companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the employees are more likely to lose their jobs or their benefits; companies are more likely to go bankrupt; patients are more likely to have higher healthcare costs; residents of nursing homes are more likely to die faster; towns struggle when private equity buys their main businesses, crippling the local economy; and school teachers, firefighters, medical technicians, and other public workers are more likely to have lower returns on their pensions because of the fees private equity extracts from their investments. In other we are all worse off because of private equity.
These Are the Plunderers is a “meticulous and devastating takedown of a powerful force in Western capitalism” (Brad Stone, bestselling author of Amazon Unbound) that exposes the greed and pillaging in private equity, revealing the many ways these billionaires have bled the economy, and, in turn, us.
391 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2023
370 people are currently reading
3453 people want to read
About the author
Gretchen Morgenson
9 books29 followersGretchen Morgenson is a business reporter and columnist at The New York Times, where she also serves as assistant business and financial editor. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" coverage of Wall Street. Prior to joining the Times in 1998, she worked as a broker at Dean Witter in the 1980s, and as a reporter at Forbes, Worth, and Money magazines. She lives with her husband and son in New York City.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gretch...
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gretch...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 112 reviews
September 27, 2024
Gretchen Morgenson exposes how private equity companies put profit over anything else including the lives of workers and the environment. Private Equity acquires a company, piles on debt, cuts costs to pay the debt, extracts cash through fees, and then sells the business as part of their standard procedure. The author details how private equity has ruined the lives of many in the pursuit of quick profit. The issue I have with the book is calling these people pirates since pirates did not have the protection of the law as private equity does. Our lawmakers have not done much to protect workers who lost jobs, policy holders, nursing home residents, patients, and other victims of these scumbags. I read so much of their wrong doing that I felt sick to my stomach and a sense of outrage. They are allowed to go this by a collusion with lawmakers that try to block legislation or water it down. The 9/11 attacks were not an inside job but private equity's looting of our economy is.
July 30, 2023
Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner have written the book nobody had the guts to write, introducing the reader via actual stories to all the tools private equity employs to go “fishing with dynamite” in the real economy.
It’s a truly tremendous account, but the authors make a mistake: they spend far too much of the reader’s time on the single case of one company, Apollo. One third of my way through the book I almost quit.
Luckily, I persisted and I was rewarded with
1. tens of cases of companies that were bombed out by the plunderers, through all the tricks they use (the large variety of payments they make to themselves as dividends or for “consulting,” the lease-buybacks of the acquired companies’ real estate with companies the plunderers control, the swapping of dud deals between funds they’re closing and funds they or other operators are running) and
2. an explanation of how the private equity industry “closes the loop” and buys political cover by selling its services to influential pension funds
The strength of the book is that it’s not an academic treatise, it’s just a relentless torrent of examples of nasty behavior and comes with a decent helping of stories from the human victims of this abuse and entire industries that have been laid to waste, all while explaining that it is 100% legal.
The authors do not stop to tell you that perhaps there is a place in our world for private equity and that conditions must exist today that have made it difficult for private acquirors of businesses to compete with their peers without cramming a ton of debt down the throat of their acquired companies.
And they are brave, they do not fail to mention that Jay Powell, the man who’s currently running the Fed, was lightning-quick to bail out his private equity former colleagues when Covid struck in the spring of 2020, raining billions of dollars of taxpayer money on the debt of their acquired companies.
As a result, the tone of the book is more “J’ Accuse” and (mention of the carried interest exemption notwithstanding) less “we need to tax capital gains and income equally,” or “we need to stop corporate debt from being tax deductible for non-banks” or even “all types of distributions ought to be taxed equally” because this book is not about solutions, it is about outrage.
But outrage is a good start, we need outrage.
I’ve bought two copies of “These are the Plunderers.” One for me and one to spread the outrage.
(Or rather to help my heart surgeon brother George better channel his outrage toward Carlyle, the company that bought and bombed out his hospital some ten years ago)
It’s a truly tremendous account, but the authors make a mistake: they spend far too much of the reader’s time on the single case of one company, Apollo. One third of my way through the book I almost quit.
Luckily, I persisted and I was rewarded with
1. tens of cases of companies that were bombed out by the plunderers, through all the tricks they use (the large variety of payments they make to themselves as dividends or for “consulting,” the lease-buybacks of the acquired companies’ real estate with companies the plunderers control, the swapping of dud deals between funds they’re closing and funds they or other operators are running) and
2. an explanation of how the private equity industry “closes the loop” and buys political cover by selling its services to influential pension funds
The strength of the book is that it’s not an academic treatise, it’s just a relentless torrent of examples of nasty behavior and comes with a decent helping of stories from the human victims of this abuse and entire industries that have been laid to waste, all while explaining that it is 100% legal.
The authors do not stop to tell you that perhaps there is a place in our world for private equity and that conditions must exist today that have made it difficult for private acquirors of businesses to compete with their peers without cramming a ton of debt down the throat of their acquired companies.
And they are brave, they do not fail to mention that Jay Powell, the man who’s currently running the Fed, was lightning-quick to bail out his private equity former colleagues when Covid struck in the spring of 2020, raining billions of dollars of taxpayer money on the debt of their acquired companies.
As a result, the tone of the book is more “J’ Accuse” and (mention of the carried interest exemption notwithstanding) less “we need to tax capital gains and income equally,” or “we need to stop corporate debt from being tax deductible for non-banks” or even “all types of distributions ought to be taxed equally” because this book is not about solutions, it is about outrage.
But outrage is a good start, we need outrage.
I’ve bought two copies of “These are the Plunderers.” One for me and one to spread the outrage.
(Or rather to help my heart surgeon brother George better channel his outrage toward Carlyle, the company that bought and bombed out his hospital some ten years ago)
May 13, 2023
I felt so ragey while listening to this one. I've worked for companies that have been owned by private equity and have seen some of the things they talked about. This whole book boils down to, I got my money, fuck you losers that got screwed!
I think what makes matter worse is that our government, that should be holding many of these actions in check, especially when these companies have been shown where they have been wrong or not running things according to the laws, do nothing.
I think what makes matter worse is that our government, that should be holding many of these actions in check, especially when these companies have been shown where they have been wrong or not running things according to the laws, do nothing.
October 27, 2023
DNF. I skimmed through about 80 pages of this before realizing it would be nothing but anecdotes and vignettes, with nary a footnoted fact to be found. I really hate the journalistic approach to writing books. I don't even like actual periodical articles written on the assumption that I won't read the actual facts unless I'm lured in with ten paragraphs of human interest bullshit.
April 30, 2023
This is such a timely and important read! These are the plunderers is focused on the insidious rise of private equity which we learn in this book has taken over in almost every industry. The devastating impact of this is the owners of PE get incredibly rich while they devastate the businesses they buy - leaving workers, customers, policy-holders, communities and pensioners in really bad shape. The chapters on what the Apollo Group and KKR among many others (Bain and Company, Merrill Lynch, etc.) are extremely upsetting to read -- they have bought up nursing homes, emergency departments and physician practices and not only does the quality of care suffer but the fees increase for patients, Medicare and others. In the end, the government has failed us too -- the DOJ and SEC have turned blind eyes to what is happening and even former democratic President Clinton helped enable this mess. We need legislation as well as university endowment funds and large pension funds to stop investing in private equity. This book highlights why investigative journalism is so critical and needs to be supported. I highly recommend this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC and I left this honest review voluntarily.
Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC and I left this honest review voluntarily.
May 9, 2025
Over the last five years, Americans have witnessed an alarming rise in the cost of essentials—housing, education, healthcare, groceries. In today’s America, the path to homelessness isn’t far-fetched; it’s frighteningly easy.
Private equity, as revealed in These Are the Plunderers, is not just a business model—it’s a metaphor for the systemic rot hollowing out the American economy. A small group of financial elites extract wealth from communities through asset stripping, sale-leasebacks, and exploitative debt structures—then insulate their power by buying influence in Washington.
This book illustrates how entire industries are looted from the inside. Private equity firms buy up companies, sell off their real estate, load them with debt, charge egregious fees, and walk away with massive profits—while workers are left with layoffs, shuttered stores, and communities stripped of economic life. It’s legalized looting.
One of the most revealing tactics described in the book is the sale-leaseback scheme—a financial maneuver that allows private equity firms to profit multiple times from a single move. First, they buy a company that owns valuable real estate—say, a grocery chain or a nursing home. Then, they sell those properties to a separate entity (often one they also control) and lease them back to the original business. This pumps immediate cash into the firm’s pockets while saddling the company with long-term rent obligations. But the extraction doesn’t stop there: private equity firms often charge transaction fees for arranging the sale of the assets to themselves, reaping additional profits just for moving money from one pocket to another. These rent payments and fees become fixed costs that weaken the company’s financial foundation. The result? Companies bought by private equity are 10% more likely to go bankrupt. And in critical sectors like healthcare, the impact is deadly. Studies have shown that nursing homes acquired by private equity firms experience higher mortality rates—a human cost of financial engineering that never shows up on a balance sheet.
Beyond asset-stripping and debt-loading, private equity also fuels market consolidation—buying up competitors and creating monopoly-like control over entire sectors. In industries like healthcare, dialysis, housing, or veterinary care, PE firms quietly acquire dozens or even hundreds of providers under different names. This reduces competition, drives up prices, and gives consumers fewer choices. It also makes it easier to standardize cost-cutting across an entire sector—meaning lower wages for workers, diminished service quality, and higher risks for patients and customers. These roll-ups don’t attract the same scrutiny as classic monopolies, but their effect is the same: concentrated control, inflated prices, and a public held hostage to essential services that are now run for maximum financial extraction, not public benefit.
But it’s not just an economic issue—it’s political. Millions of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. Many work 60+ hours and still can’t afford all three of life’s basic needs: food, housing, and education. This despair has bred political instability. And in that instability, many see a false savior in the form of authoritarian strongmen.
The rise of fascism in America isn’t separate from the economic story told in this book—it’s a consequence of it. When people's labor is siphoned upward into the hands of a few who then rig the political system to protect their gains, democracy erodes. When people cry out for help and are ignored—while corporate donations flood lawmakers’ coffers—the system stops looking like a democracy at all.
Trump's rise, and the fantasy that he will “drain the swamp,” feeds on this pain. But his administration's tariffs and nationalist rhetoric didn’t solve the problem—they merely redirected the blame. Instead of pointing to the corporate elites and financiers who plundered the country through trade deals and deregulation, they pointed the finger at immigrants, foreign nations, and the global poor.
This book exposes the truth: the American dream hasn’t been stolen by foreign countries—it’s been sold off by financiers in boardrooms.
These Are the Plunderers isn’t just a book about private equity. It’s a diagnosis of America’s political and economic decay—and a warning that if we don’t address the root causes, the consequences will be far more severe than bankruptcy filings or shuttered stores. We are facing a democratic crisis born from economic despair—and both parties are complicit in steering us toward oligarchy.
There is a lot of financial jargon in the first 30% of this book, that could turn off a segment of people. For me, I love that type of nitty gritty reporting but I can see how others could get bored. I think that is a bias that I should give prospective readers. Other then that an enjoyable read.
4.4 stars
Private equity, as revealed in These Are the Plunderers, is not just a business model—it’s a metaphor for the systemic rot hollowing out the American economy. A small group of financial elites extract wealth from communities through asset stripping, sale-leasebacks, and exploitative debt structures—then insulate their power by buying influence in Washington.
This book illustrates how entire industries are looted from the inside. Private equity firms buy up companies, sell off their real estate, load them with debt, charge egregious fees, and walk away with massive profits—while workers are left with layoffs, shuttered stores, and communities stripped of economic life. It’s legalized looting.
One of the most revealing tactics described in the book is the sale-leaseback scheme—a financial maneuver that allows private equity firms to profit multiple times from a single move. First, they buy a company that owns valuable real estate—say, a grocery chain or a nursing home. Then, they sell those properties to a separate entity (often one they also control) and lease them back to the original business. This pumps immediate cash into the firm’s pockets while saddling the company with long-term rent obligations. But the extraction doesn’t stop there: private equity firms often charge transaction fees for arranging the sale of the assets to themselves, reaping additional profits just for moving money from one pocket to another. These rent payments and fees become fixed costs that weaken the company’s financial foundation. The result? Companies bought by private equity are 10% more likely to go bankrupt. And in critical sectors like healthcare, the impact is deadly. Studies have shown that nursing homes acquired by private equity firms experience higher mortality rates—a human cost of financial engineering that never shows up on a balance sheet.
Beyond asset-stripping and debt-loading, private equity also fuels market consolidation—buying up competitors and creating monopoly-like control over entire sectors. In industries like healthcare, dialysis, housing, or veterinary care, PE firms quietly acquire dozens or even hundreds of providers under different names. This reduces competition, drives up prices, and gives consumers fewer choices. It also makes it easier to standardize cost-cutting across an entire sector—meaning lower wages for workers, diminished service quality, and higher risks for patients and customers. These roll-ups don’t attract the same scrutiny as classic monopolies, but their effect is the same: concentrated control, inflated prices, and a public held hostage to essential services that are now run for maximum financial extraction, not public benefit.
But it’s not just an economic issue—it’s political. Millions of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. Many work 60+ hours and still can’t afford all three of life’s basic needs: food, housing, and education. This despair has bred political instability. And in that instability, many see a false savior in the form of authoritarian strongmen.
The rise of fascism in America isn’t separate from the economic story told in this book—it’s a consequence of it. When people's labor is siphoned upward into the hands of a few who then rig the political system to protect their gains, democracy erodes. When people cry out for help and are ignored—while corporate donations flood lawmakers’ coffers—the system stops looking like a democracy at all.
Trump's rise, and the fantasy that he will “drain the swamp,” feeds on this pain. But his administration's tariffs and nationalist rhetoric didn’t solve the problem—they merely redirected the blame. Instead of pointing to the corporate elites and financiers who plundered the country through trade deals and deregulation, they pointed the finger at immigrants, foreign nations, and the global poor.
This book exposes the truth: the American dream hasn’t been stolen by foreign countries—it’s been sold off by financiers in boardrooms.
These Are the Plunderers isn’t just a book about private equity. It’s a diagnosis of America’s political and economic decay—and a warning that if we don’t address the root causes, the consequences will be far more severe than bankruptcy filings or shuttered stores. We are facing a democratic crisis born from economic despair—and both parties are complicit in steering us toward oligarchy.
There is a lot of financial jargon in the first 30% of this book, that could turn off a segment of people. For me, I love that type of nitty gritty reporting but I can see how others could get bored. I think that is a bias that I should give prospective readers. Other then that an enjoyable read.
4.4 stars
November 16, 2023
Private equity buys companies, loads them up with debt, strips the company of capital, fires workers, reduces the quality of the product or service, and then either bankrupts the firm or offloads the company to another bagholder. Oh yeah and everyone involved with these firms is a corrupt and greedy bastard. That's the book.
Generally, I'm a fan of "true crime" type books such as Den of Thieves where bad actors are called out for their greed, corruption and crime. However, this book, while exhaustive, seems to just kind of come off as a one-sided take on an entire industry. I think part of the problem was the fact that they tried to indict an entire industry that owns or controls hundreds or even thousands of companies, and then they chose to focus on a few dozen examples to highlight this egregious behavior. And even in these, they never really prominently called out any criminal behavior.
I think this book would have been much better as a sort of focused expose on Leon Black, which at some point uncovered some real criminality. Instead, it was just a sort of overly broad, dryly written take on an entire industry.
Generally, I'm a fan of "true crime" type books such as Den of Thieves where bad actors are called out for their greed, corruption and crime. However, this book, while exhaustive, seems to just kind of come off as a one-sided take on an entire industry. I think part of the problem was the fact that they tried to indict an entire industry that owns or controls hundreds or even thousands of companies, and then they chose to focus on a few dozen examples to highlight this egregious behavior. And even in these, they never really prominently called out any criminal behavior.
I think this book would have been much better as a sort of focused expose on Leon Black, which at some point uncovered some real criminality. Instead, it was just a sort of overly broad, dryly written take on an entire industry.
January 4, 2024
There is a long tradition in US business of using ownership “innovations” as means for appropriating undefended assets while placing the costs on other parties who have overcommitted to various arrangements and cannot resist. This is the darker side of capitalism but it is quite real and consequential to the bottom 80% of the population. Ms. Morgenson is a top business journalist who with a coauthor has written a book about private equity, which is the latest manifestation of creative finance applied to the task of draining the accounts of institutions nominally serving the middle classes. The book is a journalistic account of leveraged buyouts and related transactions that is filled with the details of the most visible cases, many of which led to legal cases. The technical details and analytics are left out but available to those who want to dig deeper. If one is paying attention, this book makes for good reading but not much that is new.
July 1, 2023
It's unfortunate that the book was written by a self-righteous political hack. The problems caused by PE affect everyone and the solutions should be non-partisan. Politicians on both sides of the aisle benefit from PE - it is a bipartisan road to wealth. Is it even possible for publishers to publish a non-political book on this subject. Spoiler: PE = bad and no one will do anything about it. Now you don't need to spend your time or money on this book.
December 13, 2023
I’m really conflicted about how to rate this book because I wholeheartedly agree with what the author is arguing but I also kinda think finance is boring so I was a little bored. But that’s not the authors fault? Anyway… I liked the chapters on private equity in healthcare/nursing homes because that is lowkey how my grandfather died so someday I will exact my revenge on Blackstone :)
June 24, 2023
Uuuh, where do I start ...
1. First of all, it's a good piece of journalism. Names, details, uncovering of particular practices & shady actions. Morgenson does not seem afraid of lawsuits (that will likely follow) - this is highly appreciated.
2. Still, I've found the first part of the book hard to follow - there were a lot of details but not much train of thought. It felt like the author is not making an effort to lead the reader through the content in a smooth manner. It's not about the intellectual challenge being too high (I believe so ...) - it's too little focus on the actual book's composition.
3. The mechanisms used by Vampire Capital (I love that term) are depicted accurately & relatively objectively (the most controversial part is - no surprise - about balancing the economic interest in healthcare, where potential cost savings may & will have an impact on e.g., mortality rates). What I've found missing (unfortunately) is proposals on how to regulate/prevent such situations from happening. Apparently, our current governance mechanisms are not sufficient, but does it mean we should cancel the whole capitalism? I don't think so.
In general - it's a good book that's also not trivial to get through. But it could have been far more thought-provoking with more specific advice.
1. First of all, it's a good piece of journalism. Names, details, uncovering of particular practices & shady actions. Morgenson does not seem afraid of lawsuits (that will likely follow) - this is highly appreciated.
2. Still, I've found the first part of the book hard to follow - there were a lot of details but not much train of thought. It felt like the author is not making an effort to lead the reader through the content in a smooth manner. It's not about the intellectual challenge being too high (I believe so ...) - it's too little focus on the actual book's composition.
3. The mechanisms used by Vampire Capital (I love that term) are depicted accurately & relatively objectively (the most controversial part is - no surprise - about balancing the economic interest in healthcare, where potential cost savings may & will have an impact on e.g., mortality rates). What I've found missing (unfortunately) is proposals on how to regulate/prevent such situations from happening. Apparently, our current governance mechanisms are not sufficient, but does it mean we should cancel the whole capitalism? I don't think so.
In general - it's a good book that's also not trivial to get through. But it could have been far more thought-provoking with more specific advice.
August 25, 2023
If you are looking for an objective critique of private equity and wall street- look elsewhere. The author has very few sentences without a subjective quip about how terrible these plunderers are. No one is disagreeing - private equity is terrible. This would be a useful book if it was informative, but it’s basically a poorly written tabloid article for the Washington Post written about the pillaging done by billionaires. The authors use simple, catchy buzzwords to follow party line- it’s not creative at all.
January 3, 2025
I learned something but I can’t lie and say I wasn’t bored most of the time
January 31, 2025
“Workers, customers, pensioners, and taxpayers—all sense they’re being robbed. They just can’t be sure by whom. So they chalk up their misery to a ‘system’ rigged against them.” This book exposes those who run and benefit from that system. Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone. Leon Black of Apollo. Gordon Geckos of the highest order. Profiting off of people’s suffering. Causing and exacerbating that suffering.
Author Gretchen Morgenson does a really solid job peeling the curtains back on the shadow industry of private equity, the “corporate raiders” who wreck companies and communities. She exposes Apollo, KKR, Carlyle Group, and others, highlighting how their treacherous deals have imperiled public health, tanked brick and mortar retail, and crushed community pillars. This is a tremendous book for anyone who wants to learn about who really dictates economic policy in this country.
The only thing I don’t like about this book is how Morgenson treats the problem of private equity plundering as a unique issue of American “unfettered” or “asshole” capitalism, rather than an inevitable feature of capitalism itself.
Author Gretchen Morgenson does a really solid job peeling the curtains back on the shadow industry of private equity, the “corporate raiders” who wreck companies and communities. She exposes Apollo, KKR, Carlyle Group, and others, highlighting how their treacherous deals have imperiled public health, tanked brick and mortar retail, and crushed community pillars. This is a tremendous book for anyone who wants to learn about who really dictates economic policy in this country.
The only thing I don’t like about this book is how Morgenson treats the problem of private equity plundering as a unique issue of American “unfettered” or “asshole” capitalism, rather than an inevitable feature of capitalism itself.
Read
May 25, 2023this is a good book and an important topic but it drives me crazy when an author just lets loose 400 pages of
"and then private equity was bad and then private equity was bad and the private equity was bad"
"and then private equity was bad and then private equity was bad and the private equity was bad"
July 8, 2023
This is extraordinarily poorly written, with little structure and so full of hyperbole as to become unreadable. It also seems to treat every effort at making money as a corrupt if not borderline fraudulent tactic
November 16, 2024
I wish I could give half-star ratings, because if so, I'd give These Are the Plunderers a solid 3.5. Interesting content, important journalism, a well-constructed narrative, but a book that sort of droned on, even over a relatively brief 324 pages. I learned a lot, but I didn't have an awesome time doing it. Sometimes that's just what journalistic books are for, I guess.
May 28, 2025
This was a recommended book and was not my favorite. I think they didn’t do a great job explaining it up front and I was so confused half the time because I don’t have any idea what all this stuff means. I found myself drifting off and not even halfway through I lost focus and was just playing it to get it done.
March 6, 2024
Vengeance is mine
Authors are more interested in political and moral vengeance than story telling. They try to act like investigative journalists but come off as petty,jealous and vengeful. PE has turned into a.very ugly business that is focused on nothing but wealth accumulation for the leaders and the employees of these firms. It is clear the writers have an axe to grind not only with the "plunderers" but they have trump derangement syndrome even though democrats are just as guilty assisting the PE people. Disappointed with the book and was hoping for something more but its about expected from a bunch of left wing wackos working for the almost irrelevant NYT. Don't waste your time reading.
Authors are more interested in political and moral vengeance than story telling. They try to act like investigative journalists but come off as petty,jealous and vengeful. PE has turned into a.very ugly business that is focused on nothing but wealth accumulation for the leaders and the employees of these firms. It is clear the writers have an axe to grind not only with the "plunderers" but they have trump derangement syndrome even though democrats are just as guilty assisting the PE people. Disappointed with the book and was hoping for something more but its about expected from a bunch of left wing wackos working for the almost irrelevant NYT. Don't waste your time reading.
June 28, 2023
A must read
What Sinclair did to meat packing, this is to private equity. Do read if you have high blood pressure or heart problems as this will make you mad at how a few are destroying our economy and our elected officials are fully complicit.
What Sinclair did to meat packing, this is to private equity. Do read if you have high blood pressure or heart problems as this will make you mad at how a few are destroying our economy and our elected officials are fully complicit.
September 7, 2023
Hack job on private equity- the thesis going in was PE bad let me show you the ways and I will hammer this own to the exclusion of everything else. A better book wo7ld be a full accounting of Leon Black!
May 19, 2023
Impeccable research, but the driving narrative feels a bit scattered
June 16, 2025
These Are The Plunderers is a very dense book, and it extensively describes all the ways in which private equity is “wrecking America,” as the subtitle promises.
My main issue is the general accessibility of the content of this book. The reason for my rating the book as I have is primarily due to the fact that I am unlikely to recommend it to anyone I know; I can’t think of a single person who would get through it without their eyes glazing over. Which is part of the problem, I know… more people do need to know about this. What these financiers are doing literally impacts people’s lives, and savings, but they are so good at hiding what they are doing, and the regulators are at best lacking any teeth to go after them, and there are too many corrupt politicians and judges who are enabling them.
The introduction also promised solutions and action steps, but coming to the conclusion, I didn’t really get a clear sense of what specifically I should be advocating for.
I consumed this book in the audio format, so to answer my lingering questions may require going through a print copy slowly and deliberately to distill this information down into something I can then put to use. Alas, this is a task I do not have the capacity to undertake at this juncture.
It is, however, a task the authors were not as effective at in this book as they ought to have been. I heard a different author say once that she views it as the author’s responsibility to know what the reader most needs to know about their subject, and not shift that work onto the reader to sort out. This book has an extensive level of information, but it is overwhelming to grapple with just what we should do about it.
If I were to recommend selected chapters, those that discuss how private equity treats the health care and nursing home sectors are the easiest to understand because I think most people have experience in some capacity with those services. They are also some of the most appalling in terms of human impact.
Otherwise the best one-sentence tl;dr I can give you is: “Private equity is doing far worse things than you can possibly imagine, and they need to be reined in and held accountable by people who actually have the power to do something and who also don’t have any conflicts of interest where they benefit from this whole situation.”Best of luck with that.
My main issue is the general accessibility of the content of this book. The reason for my rating the book as I have is primarily due to the fact that I am unlikely to recommend it to anyone I know; I can’t think of a single person who would get through it without their eyes glazing over. Which is part of the problem, I know… more people do need to know about this. What these financiers are doing literally impacts people’s lives, and savings, but they are so good at hiding what they are doing, and the regulators are at best lacking any teeth to go after them, and there are too many corrupt politicians and judges who are enabling them.
The introduction also promised solutions and action steps, but coming to the conclusion, I didn’t really get a clear sense of what specifically I should be advocating for.
I consumed this book in the audio format, so to answer my lingering questions may require going through a print copy slowly and deliberately to distill this information down into something I can then put to use. Alas, this is a task I do not have the capacity to undertake at this juncture.
It is, however, a task the authors were not as effective at in this book as they ought to have been. I heard a different author say once that she views it as the author’s responsibility to know what the reader most needs to know about their subject, and not shift that work onto the reader to sort out. This book has an extensive level of information, but it is overwhelming to grapple with just what we should do about it.
If I were to recommend selected chapters, those that discuss how private equity treats the health care and nursing home sectors are the easiest to understand because I think most people have experience in some capacity with those services. They are also some of the most appalling in terms of human impact.
Otherwise the best one-sentence tl;dr I can give you is: “Private equity is doing far worse things than you can possibly imagine, and they need to be reined in and held accountable by people who actually have the power to do something and who also don’t have any conflicts of interest where they benefit from this whole situation.”Best of luck with that.
February 7, 2024
An illuminating read and what I think is good investigative journalism at work. I assume the main goal of this book is to inform, because the conclusion from the authors was BLEAK when it comes to possible solutions.
Overall, I was left feeling deflated by their assessment about the state of this country and the prospects for meaningful change at the federal level: an inept Congress, and a pernicious & extreme right-wing Supreme Court likely this summer to strike at the heart of regulatory authority.
Overall, I was left feeling deflated by their assessment about the state of this country and the prospects for meaningful change at the federal level: an inept Congress, and a pernicious & extreme right-wing Supreme Court likely this summer to strike at the heart of regulatory authority.
December 9, 2023
Great read. The authors explain extremely complex business and investment concepts in an easy-to-understand way. The accounts of what private equity acquisitions have wrought in sensitive industries such as hospital emergency departments and nursing homes are troubling. I hope that this book influences politicians to act, though the private equity industry contributes millions of dollars each year to politicians to stop regulations. The writers make the case that making healthcare decisions by nonpyhsicians is illegal, but private equity companies have found loopholes to go around these rules. I hope that there will be some changes if enough people read this book and learn about what is happening in very sensitive industries.
June 1, 2025
This is an excellent account of the private equity industry from the early LBO days to the far more dangerous current state as they take over industries that clash with their business models.
As highlighted in the book, the growing influence of private equity ownership in healthcare, senior care, and education is bad for literally every stakeholder apart from the PE firms. This should be mandatory reading in business courses.
As highlighted in the book, the growing influence of private equity ownership in healthcare, senior care, and education is bad for literally every stakeholder apart from the PE firms. This should be mandatory reading in business courses.
August 21, 2024
Good content but dry
May 11, 2023
An excellent look at private equity firms and the havoc they bring to employees, pensions, etc.
December 27, 2024
Why is anyone talking about anything else?
I thought it was bad, but it’s so much worse.
I thought it was bad, but it’s so much worse.
July 2, 2024
Infuriating book. At times can be very jargony and dense. But even if you don’t understand every detail you’ll leave with a pretty good understanding of how these vultures work. Also, appreciated how acidic the writing is.
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