Bad Company Quotes

“If it doesn't play a role in your life yet, just wait. Private equity is everybody's problem now.”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

“Blackstone, which is both the world’s largest private equity firm and the nation’s largest landlord, is explicit about how America’s affordable-housing crisis benefits its shareholders: “a structural shortage of housing has resulted in pricing power for rental housing assets,” it wrote in a 2023 letter touting its growing investor returns. The firm has also poured millions of dollars into fighting ballot measures designed to expand rent-control protection in California. In 2019, a United Nations committee labeled Blackstone’s involvement in the housing industry a human rights concern, writing in a letter to CEO Stephen Schwarzman that the firm was “having deleterious effects on the right to housing” through buying up houses and apartment buildings and opposing regulation.”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

“And while the pensioners make for a tidier narrative, the reality is that no one benefits nearly as much from private equity as private equity itself. The system is designed so that firms put in less money and shoulder less risk than anyone else, yet reap the lion’s share of the profits. Benefiting retired teachers and firefighters might be a desirable side effect, but the point is to earn returns for private equity executives. Stephen Schwarzman didn’t earn $37 billion by putting teachers’ and firefighters’ interests first.”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

“Private equity and other investment firms spent $42 million on congressional races in the 2020 election cycle, two-thirds of which went to Democrats. Just four senators and sixty-two representatives didn’t get any private equity donations, a mere 12 percent of all elected members. In 2022, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, pulled in more than $1.2 million in industry contributions, three times more than the runner-up. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat-turned-independent who killed the 2022 provision that would have closed the carried-interest loophole, received more than half a million dollars in private equity donations in the previous election cycle. The industry’s primary lobbying group, meanwhile, has long boasted about its ability to stave off efforts to regulate private equity’s favored strategies. The American Investment Council spends as much as $3 million a year lobbying”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

“[They] grow agitated about how difficult it can be to convince other people of the severity of the private equity crisis....as if they're pointing to the monster looming just outside the window but everyone else thinks they're hallucinating.”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

“carried interest,” a structure unique to the finance industry.”
― Megan Greenwell, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream