This is a story about what some people call piracy.

These people with only dollar signs as their goal plundered something really wonderful.

And where is this so-called piracy happening? It's everywhere. It is possibly your kids schools, could be your employer,

could be the mortgage on your house, missile defense systems. It's everywhere.

The people who run these operations say they're misunderstood and that what they're doing is good for society.

Others disagree.

I suppose if I thought that it was good for society I wouldn't have called the book

Plunder. Today on Freckinomics Radio the rise and rise of the private equity

industry. This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden

inside of everything with your host Stephen Dubner. Our first guest today has an interesting job. My name is Brendan Ballou and I'm a special

counsel at the Department of Justice. Blue is a prosecutor in the

antitrust division of the DOJ. A few years back he noticed something. When companies

propose to buy big companies they have to file documents with the

Department of Justice Antitrust Division and with the FTC.

I was looking at those documents and I was seeing all these acquisitions that were coming in

and they were all companies that are being bought by institutions that I had never heard of, like Blackstone, Carlisle, K-K-K-R, Apollo,

I'd never heard of these. And so I started looking into it and started to learn about the idea of

private equity and suddenly I realized that they were buying up everything and

that got me interested in the idea of this book project which I started putting together in quarantine.

Ballou's book project has since become an actual book, which he makes clear does not represent

the views of his employer.

The book is called Plunder, Private Equity's plan to pillage America.

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