The House that Garfield Built feat. Hettie O’Brien
Riley and November speak with journalist Hettie O’Brien about her book The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself. It’s not necessarily the most uplifting topic, but it’s very illuminating. And don’t worry: we also talk about “MPs should be allowed to be drunk on the job,” and much more.
MILO ALERT Check out Milo's tour dates here:
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Comments (37)
Between this episode and Devil Wears Prada 2 I am thriving on “Scathing Critiques of private equity’s hollowing out of every institution in a way that makes you feel sympathy for even the elitist, corrupt ones of yesterday” media.
ordinary liberals and conservatives going full Russian SR with the assassination attempts is a pretty great bit honestly. how long until we see Kash posting about the We Believe Sign Combat Organization
The story of the Tribune Co., formerly owner of The Chicago Tribune, is perhaps the most egregious example of private equity fuckery. The company, which also owned the Los Angeles Times and about a dozen newspapers in smaller cities, was acquired in a leveraged buyout by a real estate developer named Sam Zell around 2003. He and his party boy executives ran it for a couple of years but bailed after scandal and discovering the media industry was not the lark they thought it was. As a result Tribune was separated from its broadcast assets (WGN) and a bunch of real estate. The broadcast company, in many cases, leased the buildings, many of which had been owned free and clear for a century or more, back to the newspapers. That takes you to about 2018 when Alden Gobal Capital bought a controlling share of Tribune Publishing (it also had to pay rent for the Tribune name). They took over in 2019 and offered buyouts to hundreds of editors across the chain to knock out all the high salaries, sold off any property that the papers still owned and closed most of the newsrooms. Alden now operates a fleet of zombie newspapers that share content regionally and are generally shells of what a community newspaper should be. Here’s a gift link to an Atlantic article that goes deep into the company. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-global-capital-killing-americas-newspapers/620171/?gift=-PCTy4nrLkbi_oiQ4v10dS0zpzdBLVFWsZu-dyYW5t8
Where I work is a product of private equity, exactly as you describe. They bought several businesses in the sector and forced them to play nice together. I've heard enough "efficiency" and "eliminate friction" for several lifetimes though. I just wanted to do engineer things.
Life On Bars, thank you
zinngggggg
I regret to inform you that unethical investment funds are a real thing,, they put your money into tobacco, fossil fuels, weapons companies etc. They're called 'Sin Stocks'
I just started watching Bodyguard and you're telling me that Keeley Hawes' character should really be falling down drunk the whole time?
For a greater understanding of private equity's role in society, put a praying mantis in a glass of water.
It's gonna be so funny when a 43 year old PTA wine mom does it
Academy Award winning director PTA?
Love to see innovation by the latest trump contestant, no sniper rifle, no lining things up, just going full sonic the hedgehog against the slow lumbering heavy attack only secret service. Bringing speedrun mechanics to a new field.
November, like Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, is bench pressing this episode ❤️ Brava
file those MPs into "people who have an alcohol problem so blatant it makes me feel okay about the amount I do drink"
Now I keep thinking about Centrist Liberal Coexist assassins
Yeah the liberal driller.
i maintain that, had donald been encouraged to be the queer, MFA-in-musical-theatre-holding diva they were CLeaRLy meant to be, we could have at least delayed all this being drunk at work is real gang shit idk wtf communists think revolution involves but i sincerely hope more of us figure it out, sharpish
I maintain that everyone around donald knew that and kept it from him his whole life because it kept him miserable and malleable. There's no money in solving a wealthy man's neuroses. There's a lot to be made in exploiting them and ideally making them worse
The Greens banker exists their are a bunch of them in various Australian parliaments
What a dynamite interview
The underlying justification for PE feels like what is so wrong with so many policies, that if something is harsh it must be beneficial. We see this in immigration and health policy. In Kamala Harris praising a "lethal" military or Hegseth's obsession with the appearance of strength. We know for a fact that the most humane and financially efficient way to solve homelessness is to just give people housing. But clearances and punishment are harsher so they must be better.
It's taking 'no pain no gain' to its logical conclusion: pain is proof of gain, and the more pain we're in the more we must be gaining. It's just a rumour, but I heard that one of the first innovations of the Australian Institute of Sport was to get athletes to take rest days and relax. That wasn't well received at the time because time spent at the cinema slaying a slab with the lads could be spent doing laps (it was the '80s). But it paid such obvious dividends that they had to admit it was a better way to train I don't think that's going to happen with most inhumane policies because the cruelty is the point, not efficacy or efficiency. There's no amount of improvement in race time you could show them to convince them that a balanced training regimen is better morally. They'd rather lose with a team of semi-cripples who spend half their time at the physiotherapist for the agony than win with 'slackers' who didn't hurt as much as possible. Whether it costs them victory in the race is immaterial, the suffering of the journey means they've won
Becoming an MP is like becoming a New God in Fear & Hunger.
Reinstitute James' Witchcraft laws, consider Banking to be Sorcerie
Repeat The Great Stink but with weed, prevent parliamentarians from going home (remind them the collegial sleepover) link the water main to gin
Do you think she means homosexuals or cigarillos
I heard that Donald Dewar prevented the Scottish parliament plans from having a bar to avoid this culture, then within weeks of his death the plans were altered
Chip switch? That ice cream sandwich they killed off in 2009 and then brought back somewhat recently?
"Damn bitch, you govern like this?" Hit me harder than I care to admit.
I've pegged private equity as a quasi-legal version of what the mob does as referenced in the Goodfellas. They bleed every dime they can get from the company and when it's no longer worth anything they torch it for the insurance money.
Okay so the second sentence made the first considerably less alarming
As a software developer who works from home I will accept MPs drinking at work if I am also protected for doing so under employment law
"I pledge enmity to the guy" is going to change me a little
I mean apparently Mhairi Black quit parliament precisely because of how weird and offputting the whole environment is. Black is I think an example of the kind of ideology-free nice young liberal with good grades who went into parliament to Make Her Voice Heard and was violently shaken out of that notion by the obvious strangeness and corruption of the whole affair
I've literally just finished watching Hettie on an Unlearning Economics livestream!
Hearing Plaid pronounced like that at the beginning must be like how Riley feels whenever Milo does the Eurotrash Canadien accent EDIT - Incidentally, I put on today's episode of PSA just to see who they responded and it made me so mad I had to turn it off. HE'S ONE OF YOU, YOU LIB FUCKWITS, STOP TRYING TO MAKE OUT LIKE HIS WORLDVIEW IS ALIEN TO YOU
what does PSA stand for?