Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast.

It's easy enough to look into one industry at a time to see what's going wrong.

That's what we usually do.

But today, we're looking at what is often lurking in the background of higher prices,

lower quality goods and services, and ultimately many failing businesses.

Private equity. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our top takes

in about 50 minutes today includes the plain bagel, windover, the Chris Hedges report, Senator

Elizabeth Warren, and more perfect union. Then in the

additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in three sections. Section A,

how it works, section B, power, and section C, solutions. Most people have never heard of these companies before.

Blackstone, the largest private equity company with over $1 trillion in assets in

management, might be a more well-known part of the group, in part because people just keep

mixing it up with the much larger Black Rock.

But other companies like KKR, Carlisle Group, Apollo, and a number of other large players in the space,

have all managed to maintain pretty low public profiles,

despite the fact that many of these companies each individually manage hundreds of billions of dollars,

really contributing to this dark, ominous image of a secret puppet master corporation, operating

everything from the shadows.

And with the area having grown over 10-fold since the 2008 financial crisis, they've come

to control some pretty prominent brands, including Baskin Robbins, Duncan Donuts, Michaels,

and even Ancestry.com, which raises a number of questions.

Who exactly are these companies? Are they really as evil as people say they are? Should I be concerned that they've been collecting spit samples from over 3.5 million subscribers?

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