PRIVATE

Private equity (PE) firms are Wall Street companies that raise money from institutional investors (like pension funds and endowments) and very rich people to buy companies, load them with debt, extract as much as they can for themselves, and dump them. These billionaire factories funnel wealth to executives at the expense of workers, consumers, and patients... Many people learned about PE abuses through the tanking of ToysRUs and other major retailers, but the problem is even bigger than that. PE has grown from $1 trillion in 2008 to nearly $4.5 trillion today, controlling 11.7 million jobs in the US. Private equity firms have rigged the system to create a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation... PE firms close safety net hospitals, gouge consumers, and increase chances of death.