United States | News & Politics

With fast-growing private equity firms controlling as much as 20% of the U.S. economy with minimal disclosure requirements, business leaders must understand the implications of increasing concentration of ownership by both private equity firms and index funds and advocate for enhanced reporting standards, a Harvard Law School professor argues. At stake: market competitiveness, innovation, and economic fairness.

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Private equity has its origins in leveraged buyouts in the 1970s and 1980s. The idea was to take companies, usually publicly listed on the stock exchange, borrow a lot of money—that’s the leverage—and buy them out. Then, they could use their control to improve the value of the company and resell it, typically 3 to 5 years later. That’s the original idea of what private equity mostly does.

What’s changed since then is that the scale of operations of private equity has grown and grown and grown—to the point that now private equity controls between 15% and 20% of the entire U.S. economy. They’re no longer buying isolated companies and flipping them back to the public markets. Instead, they buy them and sell them to mostly other private equity firms. They’ve become their own separate capital universe.

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The private equity industry is very good at convincing Congress or regulatory officials to shape laws in a way that allows them to remain essentially dark. They don't put out public reports. They don't put out any information that the public can use to evaluate what they're doing, or even their investment performance.

It is increasingly a challenge for the legitimacy of capitalism. Capitalism depends upon some degree of transparency about how it's functioning, how workers are being treated, and how consumers are being treated.

The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.

That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.

Dec 27 (Reuters) - Global equity funds witnessed sharp inflows in the week through Dec. 25, rebounding from significant net sales the previous week, buoyed by a benign U.S. inflation report and relief that Washington had averted a government shutdown, which restored investor confidence in risk assets.

According to LSEG data, investors pumped a hefty $34.38 billion into global equity funds, the largest amount in six weeks, following a net $36.84 billion worth of sales in the week before.

The New York Times deleted a video of violence in Amsterdam it published once it realized that the perpetrators were Israelis and not an anti-Semitic mob.

The Times had falsely claimed that the video showed Israeli football fans being attacked while in the Netherlands to support their team. What the video actually showed was a group of Israelis chasing and attacking locals. Instead of changing their story and highlighting the bad behavior of the Israelis, the Paper of Record decided to delete the video.

Crucial to understanding why corporate media outlets cover some events and not others is the sociological concept of “Worthy Victims.” If the perpetrator is our enemy, and there is political capital to be made from highlighting their crime, then the media will deem the victim “worthy” — especially if the victim is a pro-U.S. figure. If, however, you die at the hands of the U.S. or its allies, you can expect little sympathy or coverage from the press.