Today’s links Private equity ghouls have a new way to steal from their investors: Continuation funds are a multi-billion-dollar blackmail racket. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Private equity ghouls have a new way to steal from their investors (permalink) Private equity is quite a racket. PE managers pile up other peoples’ money – pension funds, plutes, other pools of money – and then “invest” it (buying businesses, loading them with debt, cutting wages, lowering quality and setting traps for customers). For this, they get an annual fee – 2% – of the money they manage, and a bonus for any profits they make. On top of this, private equity bosses get to use the carried interest tax loophole, a scam that lets them treat this ordinary income as a capital gain, so they can pay half the taxes that a working stiff would pay on a regular salary. If you don’t know much about carried interest, you might think it has to do with “interest” on a loan or a deposit, but it’s way weirder. “Carried interest” is a tax regime designed for 16th century sea captains and their “interest” in the cargo they “carried”: https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest Private equity is a cancer. Its profits come from buying productive firms, loading them with debt, abusing their suppliers, workers and customers, and driving them into ground, stiffing all of them – and the company’s…Pluralistic: Private equity ghouls have a new way to steal from their investors (20 July 2023)