Author Brendan Ballou joins me to discuss his superb new book, Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America in the latest episode of The Grant Williams Podcast. After graduating Columbia and Stanford Law, Brendan served as a Federal prosecutor and Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, where his mandate was to investigate private equity's influence on financial markets.
What he found shocked Brendan and moved him to write a book chronicling the outsize effect private equity has had in so much of American life over the last several decades.
From nursing homes to prison phone companies, Brendan details how private equity has reshaped American business by raising prices, reducing quality, cutting jobs, and shifting resources from productive to unproductive parts of the economy. Forced to take on huge debts and pay extractive fees, companies purchased by private equity firms are often left bankrupt, or shells of their former selves, with consequences to communities that long depended on them.
Every episode of the Grant Williams podcast, including This Week In Doom, The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game and Shifts Happen, is available to Copper, Silver and Gold Tier subscribers at my website www.Grant-Williams.com.
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The Grant Williams Podcast