Private equity, which is this term that I think we've all heard, but a lot of us,

including myself, didn't understand, was really taking over a large segment of the American economy.

You know, if you ever had this experience where there's a brand or a thing that you love,

and all of a sudden it just starts to get shitty, dollars to donuts, it was purchased by a private

equity company. You're talking about private equity or piracy. Yeah.

Hoi there, hoi there Nick.

From the home offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics,

with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.

Goldie, today on the podcast, we get to talk about a subject that's really near and dear to my heart,

which is private equity. You know, I am a capitalist. I continue to be a capitalist, but there are a

lot of bad things that happen in the neoliberal form of capitalism that the United States of America

has decided to embrace. And nobody better embodies the shittiness of that than my good friends in

the private equity industry. You're talking about private equity or piracy. Hoi there Nick,

are we talking about piracy on this episode again? It is very similar. And private equity,

you know, is a business model that shouldn't be bad. It's quite straightforward. You take some

money, you take a little investor money, you borrow some money, you buy a company, and theoretically,

you run it better and then sell it for more than you paid. Right, you could be a turnaround

artist, right? You take a struggling company, you put some money into it, you tighten up things,

you improve morale, you make it better, it turns more profitable, and then you sell it as

for a profit. That's the way that's what private equity sells itself to us. That's what it says it

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