Which is why I’m not as worried about Cotton. People can see him coming. It’s the one you underestimate.
Also he’s not charismatic enough to be a real populist.
What you get for $4/month on The Athletic is amazing.
The Athletic should just hire everyone from Deadspin - make half the stuff free and half paid.
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Also Clay Travis is a fucking douche bag who needs to be punched into oblivion. He is a right wing piece of shit who got his start on deadspin and is now dancing on their grave. He, of course, currently has a show on Fox.
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No man. Gaetz is an uber clown. I’ll give you the guy to keep an eye on: Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri
Anyone remember what I said about people who think this seriously? Case rested.
He was loud parts quiet. We’re quiet parts loud now. There’s no putting that back in the bottle. Tom Cotton was someone to worry about in 2014. He’s game over in 2019. It’s disappointing that so many of you think he’s an issue. He’s not. Look for the smart racists with pedigrees who will say it loud. Again, that’s Hawley.
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I don’t think Tom Cotton is “game over” at all, but you’re right about Josh Hawley being concerning.
I think it’s someone no one has ever heard of yet. Might not happen for like 20-30 years. But it will be someone that can rile up the base yet seem like pragmatic conservative.
How else is it even supposed to work? The other options are basically:
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Pledge the PE fund’s other investments to secure the acquisition borrowing. No one wants this. A lender doesn’t want to have to underwrite 10 businesses instead of one. Because of the way carried interest works, LPs are extremely averse to allowing the fund to create losses in one investment in service to another one. The sponsor actually might like this approach, but only because it would let them cheat on the fund rules. (It’s roughly analogous to the horse in a staking arrangement doing well in a tournament and then rolling the proceeds into a higher buy-in tournament rather than paying makeup.)
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Pledge the LPs’ credit behind the debt. Funds actually do this for cash flow loans, but LPs would never, ever agree to this for investment debt. It’s probably actually illegal under ERISA for pension funds.
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Pledge the sponsor’s credit. I suppose this is what you all want to see, but it has the problems of the sponsor not being willing to do it and lenders not actually being interested in foreclosing on some dude’s house after they lose $100 million on a bad debt.
The acquisition target borrows the money because the target is the one who is expected to actually repay the loan or, if things go bad, who has the assets that can be seized. It’s actually pretty similar to a residential mortgage–it may feel like you’re borrowing the money, but it’s really the house that has the credit. (Note that the bank makes you insure the house, but they don’t GAF if you have life insurance…) In a lot of jurisdictions (CA included), the owner is actually exactly like a PE fund in that they are free and clear of the debt once the lender takes the collateral.
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Yeah it seems kind of obvious that PE isn’t adding much to the economy by buying companies, leveraging them up, paying themselves the money they borrowed on behalf of the company, and then reselling the company on the open market but with way more debt.
Like sure if the only goal of a corporation is to profit the shareholders this is all fine, but if you care about literally any other stakeholder at all it’s just awful.
I say this as someone who understands PE on a semi deep level. I’ve felt this way for a long long time. The whole thing is super super scammy. Particularly when they routinely cash out any amount of money the company has over the legally mandated minimum to secure the pension fund. To be clear the minimum is often based on super unrealistic returns that are not actually available, and the employees and vendors usually get absolutely raped when the company goes busto under the debt load the PE guys stuck on the company.
Elizabeth Warren is right about PE.
Bob,
Your critical, misguided assumption is that PE existing is a given.
Cliff notes : It works that way because it’s way better for the financeers for it to work that way.
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Yes - like why do I get bills from 5 different entities for my endoscopy?
I mean I don’t get a separate bill from the guy who fixes the dent in my fender, the shop where he works, the porter who drives my car around, the mechanic who referred me to the body shop, and my car insurance company.
But apparently I’m just too dumb to understand why I can’t get just one bill from the hospital - much like how I’m too dumb to understand how you can buy a company with its own debt.
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Unexpectedly, the authors find that conscientiousness scores make less of a difference to people’s performance when they’re in high-complexity careers. Instead, they mainly seems to matter in low- or moderate-complexity jobs.
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It is absolutely ridiculous. Everyone does their own billing. Each doctor is separate. Anesthesiologists are separate. Sometimes different departments bill separately. You even get separate bills even when the hospital owns and manages the practice of the doctor.
There might be legitimate accounting reasons in some cases but I suspect a big part of it is just to create confusion and uncertainty. I have gotten double billed in the past across invoices from different entities.
Regardless, it is something that needs to be massively overhauled. Hopefully a M4A will help but I suspect billing the government would be just as confusing.
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More reasons why Facebook’s idiotic political advertising policy is horrible.
They claim people running for office can lie in ads but now say they are going to make judgment calls as to if people are seriously running for office.
Why not make the judgment calls on the ads themselves like any sane business would do if they were insistent on carrying political ads.
I think the best assessment I have seen is that Facebook is really scared of getting hit with anti trust issues so they are bending over backwards to satisfy the right wing political spectrum. It is why they met with right wing media outlets and politicians and why they continue this ridiculous policy.
People are entrusting massive volumes of personal data to a company that demonstrates horrible judgment at pretty much every turn.