Modern day robber barons

Dear editors,

Hedge fund management firms and private “equity” giants such as Bridgewater, The Carlyle Group, Apollo and Blackstone routinely make hundreds of million dollars. How? By executing carefully planned buyouts of companies. Next, they load the companies with exorbitant debt, sell off the company’s assets, causing mass layoffs and even destroying pension funds, Next, they suck every dollar of profit, and eventually sell off the company, indifferent to the chaos and pain caused by what they call “downsizing.” These modern day robber barons spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists tasked with schmoozing with Congress for tax leniency and corporate welfare. These predatory firms reap staggering profits for doing … nothing. They are not interested in developing products or services. They know one word: more. Private “equity” (a misnomer) firms even buy up retirement facilities and hospitals (see Apollo’s “Team Health,” a hospital staffing company which managed emergency rooms in 2021, cutting staff and supplies to increase profits).

A recent news article on (meaningless) changes at Bridgewater (“How CT hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates has changed in post-Dalio era” promotes the myth of these hedge fund and private equity firms as benevolent contributors to society. In fact, aside from philanthropic window dressing, these firms laugh at the working poor. No worker on break at McDonald’s or Walmart (two corporations that can boast of employing millions of workers who are receiving food stamps) wants to see photos of smiling billionaires giving “fireside chats” about the virtues of their multi-billion dollar machines. So please, no more rose-colored articles about these media-anointed brilliant businessmen. We don’t care.

Will Duchon Stratford