[asmnzxklopqw]

My opinion is that private equity is the biggest scam of them all.

It’s essentially just money poured in unregulated markets, fueling unaudited businesses very often highly in debt and running on very shaky grounds, in such way that they could have never been listed publicly. The whole private equity sector is kept alive only by more money poured into system and more debt, in the end looking very similar to a pyramid scheme.

[JumpCrisscross]

> whole private equity sector is kept alive only by more money poured into system and more debt

Source?

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

This is silly question. Very few people believed that Enron was insolvent or that MBS presented systemic risk even if the rating agencies weren’t completely corrupted.

[qeternity]

I see people say this and just have to ask what you think you know that the investors in PE funds don’t? Asset management is an insanely competitive industry. There are loads of alternatives products available. Why would people continue to invest in a scam? Do you think there is a chance you don’t understand the industry as well as the asset allocators who study it full time?

[skulk]

I'm guessing GP meant scam as in "a terribly short-sighted way to structure an economy" rather than your garden variety bait-and-switch scam.

[barfbagginus]

Easy. The entire market is full of scammers. They compete on how to scam you the best. And the companies that don't scam don't survive. Tada! There's nothing else to invest in but scams.

It's kind of how even though Google is dying due to returning awful results, no other search engine eclipses it, because the results they return are just as awful.... Yes, even kagi. Because pretty much the entire internet has become awfulized.

Let me make an analogy with the pro asset managers. I surf the internet full time. But that doesn't give me freedom from an enshittified web. That just ensures that I can still make my living off of it, as a software developer who needs the web for references and problem solving.

Managers realize it's a shell game, because they're the dealers and they're playing it for revenue against the marks. They just have to be a little more careful than the final victims.