Who Killed The Free Ambulance? (It’s Not Millennials) 06.27.23

In episode 1507, Jack and Miles are joined by Brendan Ballou to discuss… Did You Know Ambulances Used To Be Free? An Enlightening, Infuriating Talk With the Author of Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America About the Industry That’s Destroying America From the Inside Out and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety three,
episode one of Dirdlyshi Guys.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Say, production of My Heart Radio.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is a podcast where we take a deep dive
into america shared consciousness.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And it is Tuesday, June.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Twenty seventh, twenty twenty three, six two seven, twenty twenty three.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
You know what it means. Sorry, my computer is crashing.
Oh wral doesn't matter. They can't stop us because six
twenty seven. Oh you better. I don't even know what
I was gonna where I was gonna pivot to, but anyways,
National Orange Blossom Day, National Sunglasses Day, International Pineapple Day,
National PTSD Awareness Day, Micro Small and Medium Enterprise of Game,

(00:42):
National Onion Day, National Atype Testing, and National ice Cream
Cake Day. There's a lot of days today. We got
them all.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
We got two of my favorites fragrances. You know, orange blossom.
I've got some orange blossom like candles, life blossom tea,
oh honey, and then onion onion tea.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, Onion's gonna candles that like that onion perfume that
you have is right high watering, like you just like
get a little misty. Could you imagine if there was
a thing where like you were just fucking emitting the
ship that makes your eyes water from onions, like, like, Yo,

(01:18):
what the fuck is that actually cheering up near you?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Well, my name is Jack O'Brien ak on we on
we on we on we I swear to you that
I know this word man on we on we on
we on we I know how to speak. I promise

(01:43):
you I can. That is courtesy of a c w
GB O on the discord making fun of me, humiliating
me for a mispronouncing on we as ny and you
I you I anyway, I I'm thrilled to be joined

(02:06):
as always by my co host mister Miles Gray.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Miles prey K.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
I'm a bitch, I'm in Orcas thinking y'all just stop
my Yorca. I'm a sinner, I'm a well I'm gonna
hit you with my tail, Okay. Shout out to Paul
Garaventa Peache up in It, who found this on the Twitter.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
It's funny. I love when people find things that are like, Yo,
listen to AKA, they don't even listen to show. But
these people don't know what you wrote is an AKA
And that was from Connor Daily on Twitter. But yeah,
hell yeah, Connor, aren't they aren't the activities spreading of
the Orcas? Yeah, I think there was another one where
they were like in like near the British Isles or
something there. I called the British Isles like I'm an

(02:49):
old explorer. Yeah, I think I read about a new one.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
I don't know what it means for how far the
message has spread from White Gladys.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yes, but north of Scotland they say, damn, they say
that again, this could be like a slight thing where
now like media is like being like this is this
is a new thing or attack spreading like wildflyre because
I said quote it appears to be leap frogging across oceans. Well,
they're fucking have like cell coverage out there. How would

(03:19):
it be leap frogging.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
They got that five gjack or maybe whales swim that
far that fast.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Or maybe orcas just know how to stay on code. Yeah,
that's right.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Anyways, Miles, this is a very special episode. Our guest
today is an expert author of a book that I
will just say explained a lot, explained everything about how
modern America operates in a lot of aspects.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
And you'll you'll even hear me admit the beginning, I'm
like I would, I was going around a lot of
my adult life vaguely understanding what we're talking about, and
then but hearing it act properly and like reading it,
have it be properly articulated by someone who's like looking
at it from a legal standpoint, you're like, oh, yeah, yo,
that's fucking terrible. I mean, like I knew that broadly,

(04:12):
but this is it gives it so much texture in
a way that Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
But it might seem at first like a little depressing
because it's like it's giving you really good texture on
like why things are bad in certain ways. But I
think ultimately it's kind of hopeful because it at least
gives you an understanding of how things are actually operating.
So we're going to talk to our expert guest, Brendan Blue,
for a couple acts here for like the next forty minutes.

(04:37):
We'll come back and close things out after that. So
we will talk to you guys in a bit.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Just a caveat I normally, I just I don't speak
to the Feds normally, so please don't. I don't want
you guys writing in about how I made Miles do it.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
I said, it's a It's always been fine for me.
Come along, friend, let's talk to the Fed.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
All right, Miles.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat
by a federal prosecutor who served as special counsel at
the Department of Justice. He is the author of the
book Plunder, which he is here to talk to us
about today. It is a hugely compelling, infuriating read about
an industry I knew very little about, so Brendan, first

(05:24):
of all, welcome, Thank you for joining us. Thank you
so much for having me. So I just want to
I want to go as long as I can talking
about this without mentioning the name of the industry that
your book is about, just because I feel like when
I hear the two words that are the name of
the industry, like.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
My brain just goes to sleep.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Because it's also like the name that I've heard people
who I like went to school with be like, oh,
well I do some things and and I'm just like, okay,
I don't I don't know what that's cool. It's right,
it's so divorced from reality and like anything that makes
sense to me, And maybe that's by design. I don't know,
but just some facts real quick. So, these companies are

(06:10):
massive and invisible in a lot of cases. You mentioned
that they would be two of them would be the
third and fourth biggest employers of people in the country
behind Amazon and Walmart if they like admitted that they existed.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
Or owned these entities, right one.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
This industry helps explain why ambulances are aren't free. Ambulances
used to be free. Like you have a quote that
is very close to some things we've been saying on
our show, Like anecdotally, it feels like everything's getting a
little worse. Our products are lower equality, our stores are understaffed.

(06:50):
And this book, more than anything I've read recently, really
helped me make sense of why that is or how
that's happening. And then there's also the list of companies
that this industry took over and then those companies declared
bankruptcy that I just want to read through really quickly. Like,

(07:11):
so we've got Jay Crew, Neiman, Marcus Toys, r us Sears,
twenty four Hour Fitness, Aeropostyle, American Apparel, Brookstone, Player's David's Bridle,
dead Spin, Jimberrey Hertz, KB Toys, Linen's and Things, Mattress Firm,
nine West, Payless Shoes, Radio shack Shop, co sports authority,
true religion, friendlies, friendlies, Yes, And I just so I

(07:38):
had just kind of taken it for granted that those places,
along with the like mom and pop stores like just
no longer needed to exist because Amazon or something you
know like that. It was just like Walmart and Amazon
coming in and out dueling the mid size guys with scale.
But a lot of those companies still deliver on the
central premise of capitalism, of like the delivering value to

(08:01):
people's lives and getting paid for it. And like, so
this helped me fill in a bank a blank that
like a lot of these companies are actually getting killed
off by the science killer that is private equity. Private equity,
folks said it all right again, a word that has
the magical power to turn my brain off.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
But it's one of those words too, like it turns
my brain off because it sounds like when I hear
it so much that I'm embarrassed to admit how little
I know about it. And you're like, yeah, private equity,
I know, like I hear that all the time. And
if someone asked me to start explaining it, I would
probably start like sounding like some maga Republican trying to
explain like how the insurrection was an inside job or

(08:41):
like the dog, like, well, the thing you gotta understand
is like the Clinton socks case and documents, and you're like, whoa, wait,
huh that I'm that. I think it's also that's sort
of like the brilliant part of this industry is that
it so many of us are blissfully ignorant of its
power while it is able to just run rampant.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, but let's talk scale first of all, Like these
are massive companies, as you mentioned, third and fourth biggest
employers in the country.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, so it's kind of amazing how big private equity
firms are. And I should say at the outset, of course,
that I'm speaking purely personally and not necessarily reflecting the
views of my employer. So let's just talk numbers here.
As you mentioned the some leading private equity firms, if
they were considered with their portfolio companies, would be the third, fourth,
and fifth largest companies in America after just Amazon and Walmart.

(09:30):
In terms of what they're buying. Private equity firms spent
a little over trillion dollars buying companies last year and
one point two trillion dollars the year before. Just for
a sense of perspective, the entire US GDP is about
twenty five trillion dollars, so it's not an insubstantial part
of the entire US economy. And in terms of where
they're spreading out, it's just about every industry you name,

(09:53):
you can think of. You know, you already named, you know, ambulances,
you named a lot of retail stores and so forth.
But whether we're talking about healthcare, housing, prisons, education, municipal services.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
You know.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Literally the font of my book was owned and licensed
by a private equity portfolio company, so it really surrounds you.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, I guess my assumption and maybe maybe the reason
that like the the ideas behind private equity like didn't cohere,
didn't like stick my brain is that like it doesn't
they don't take over, And I guess the premise is
right that they take over a company and they figure
out ways to make the company better and more profitable,

(10:34):
like as this, you know, in and of itself, this
company now delivers better value to the customers that serves
at a cheaper price, but instead of doing that, they
are really seem to be doing something between that and
stripping it for parts and like getting them to pay

(10:55):
them fees and putting them out of business in a
way that is legally structured so that they don't face
any of the consequences.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, Miles kind of
framed it right, because it's something that I felt starting
out of this project. Is private equity is a word
that or a term that I think we've all heard,
but like, if we're honest, like we usually don't actually
know what it means. And I'll confess I didn't know
what it meant until about a third of the way
through this project. So I don't think anybody should feel
embarrassed about that. So just taking a step back, So

(11:27):
what is private equity and how does this business model work?
So private equity firms take a little bit of their
own money, some investor money, and a whole lot of
borrowed money to buy up companies, as you were saying, Jack,
and then what they do is they sort of enact
these operational or financial changes with the aim of selling
it for a profit a few years later. So it's

(11:47):
a very simple idea but the problem that we've got
is our laws and regulations are structured in a way
that really leads to a lot of bad outcomes. So,
for instance, private equity firms typically just own companies for
a few years, so they have a very short term perspective.
And when they own them, they tend to load the
companies up with a lot of debt, and they tend
to extract a lot of fees. And then third, and

(12:09):
this is the part that interests me the most is
a lawyer is they're extremely good at insulating themselves from
legal liability for the consequences of their actions. So when
you've got those three problems, it leads to all the
things that we're talking about here. Short term, a lot
of debt, insulation from responsibility. It means that private equity
firms often profit, but the companies, the customers, and the

(12:31):
employees often don't.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, and it like how much is that? Because like
that that.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Is something even as you are describing it, like just
this idea of adding hidden fees to these companies and
extracting fees, like using them like atm machines, and like
doing things that are just like short term value grabs.
As much as possible or just like money grabs like
that seems to be like you talk about how these

(12:58):
are the new cool places to work in the finance industry,
and it like that logic of like no longer think
about long term health and just like kind of cynically
like smashing the company until smashing thing you are doing
business with until it gives you money. Like that, it
feels like that we're seeing that kind of everywhere, like

(13:22):
when we talked about like the new HBO Max changing
its name to Max and like that. But like his
main insight is like just cut budgets like that. That's
the other thing that just keeps coming up over and
over again is like their big insight, if you can
call it, that is just like cut budgets, don't don't
spend any money so that we can turn things around

(13:45):
really quickly, and that that ends with them like being
understaffed during like they they cut doctors. Like what one
of one of the private equity firms that like bought
an ER was in some way in charge of an
R was like cutting staff during the COVID pandemic. Like

(14:05):
it's just they only have like three answers and they're
all just short term value graps.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
Right, yeah, well, let me give an example of sort
of how this sometimes works, it works in practice, and
then maybe I can address I think what your broader
point is here. So, you know, one of the examples
that I always turned to is Carlisle's acquisition of HCR
Manor Care, which was this very large nursing home chain
in the United States. So they bought it up primarily
with death, executed a lot of tactics that you were

(14:33):
sort of alluding to, like what's called a sale lease back,
where they required Manor Care to sell all of its
buildings and offices and then lease it back to itself,
which kind of gives it a quick hit of cash,
but means that now they sort of have a lease
on something that they used to own. They extracted transaction
fees and management fees, which were essentially fees for the

(14:54):
privilege of being owned by the private equity firm. And
you know, understandably, you know, when you start extracting money
and disinvesting in the company, health code violet, health code
complaints spike. You know, residents start complaining about you know,
rodents and roaches and things like that. Eventually somebody dies
in one of the nursing homes. But when their family

(15:15):
sues for wrongful death, Carlisle's able to get the case
against it dismissed by arguing that it is not the
technical owner of the nursing home chain. Instead, it merely
advises a series of funds whose limited partners, through several
shell companies, own the nursing home chain, and that's enough
to get the case against it dismissed. And that's, you know,

(15:35):
sort of the a typical example or I shouldn't say typical,
but a frequent enough example of how you can have
a bad consequence with this business model. Now, if I
can get to it, I think what your broader point is,
which is, I think that there's a feeling in this
economy that, you know, there's sort of a short term perspective,
that there's a sort of idea of extraction rather than

(15:57):
investment and all these things. And I think that there
are to broad macro things happening in our economy that
can account for that, and sort of talking about the
rise of the ideology of shareholder supremacy.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
And things like that.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
But one thing that I always try to hit home
is that private equity actually is new and is different,
and it's something sort of unique and separate from the
rest of the financial industry, which is not to say
that the rest of the financial industry is pure and
clean and you know, perfect, but it's something distinct. And
I do that because I think if we sort of
throw up our hands and say that the entire sort

(16:30):
of economy is broken, the nature of capitalism has failed
and so forth, it can lead to a certain level
of you know, sort of nihilism. Whereas if we say
we've got the specific problem with this private equity business model,
I think it's something that we can actually fix.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, I definitely felt more knowledgeable and therefore hopeful following
reading your book than I did before, because, yeah, it
doesn't feel necessarily like it is everything having to do
with capitalism. It feels like capitalism has this horrible version
of like capitalism can sor that is just you know,
invading and being able to spread, and it's silent and

(17:06):
so and kind of invisible to a lot of people,
and so it's kind of out of control.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
I think to that point right of being able to
diagnose the issues, because I think broadly we see the
issues of capitalism in this form of hypercapitalism we're in.
But it's one thing to be able to say, okay, now,
let's be able to an or be able to diagnose
these specific causes because before, like to Jack's point, I

(17:31):
was on a like just sort of this ignorant path
of being like I don't know, Amazon like ruined all
these like small places, and like I don't know, maybe
people aren't buying toys anymore. That's what I Toys r
Us went under. And it's like, no, it's because there
is a very it's like a very proven method of
making money like this, and it's and it's we're incentivizing
it because people are also on top of this, Like

(17:53):
let's like I don't want to lose sight of the
amount of money that these people make sort of at
out our own expense, at the spens of these people
that are in these you know, nursing homes or in
prison or working for certain countries or certain companies. Sorry,
but you're like you appointed to like a really interesting
statistic because just to give people an idea of how
wealthy the people that are involved in the pe pirate

(18:15):
equity or whatever you want to call it, to get
people's ears, like up a little bit like what's the like,
what's the sort of disparity and how much money these
people make versus something like we can wrap our heads
around like you know, like professional athletes. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
So one of the statistics that really grab my attention
is that there are now more private equity managers who
make over one hundred million dollars a year than all
other financial executives, investment bankers, and professional athletes combined. So
this tiny part of the industry is really dominant. I mean,
you know, to go back to a point I think

(18:48):
you were making earlier jack about how private equity, even
though this sort of obscure sounding thing is, is sort
of the hot place to be in finance. The head
of Blackstone, which is one of the leading private equity firms,
last year made I think ten times as much as
the CEO of Goldman's Axe, and I don't think the
CEO of Goldman's Axe is terribly underpaid. So, you know,
these are areas where you know, literally you have folks

(19:11):
whose net worth is the GDP of you know, some
small country.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Right, yeah, yeah, you taught you describe some parties that
they're throwing in the book, and it's.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
And the whole head of Goldman is the DJ. That's
how these guys are Like that dude, I have him
here to be the DJ, not to be a fun guest.

Speaker 4 (19:31):
I think one of the parties Stephen Schwartzman's seventieth birthday,
he's that he's one of the heads of Blackstone. Had
I think at least one or two Chinese temples built
in his honor on his property in Florida, had sort
of dancers, hired the cast of Jersey Boys boys brought
in and had Gwen Stefani sing him Happy Birthday personally.

(19:53):
So you know, these folks have a fair amount of
money to work with, and he's got taste.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
You know, he's no doubt fan is like I love
Tragic Kingdom. How much money do I got to pay
for you and Tony to get back together the basis
I love that that don't speak video. The other thing too,
is like again we talk about because everything is typically
that we see, it's always praying on the weakest in
our society, whether it's like draconian legislation or like the

(20:18):
kinds of consumers these companies go after. I feel like
it's it's like almost guaranteed that the people that are
on the shit end of the deal, are working people
or people who have no options. Can you talk about
like how specifically, like how this works too, because there
is a methodology to getting as much money as they

(20:38):
can out of this because they know they have a
sort of captive consumer base.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
Yeah, I think your phrase captive consumer base is exactly right,
because you know, when I started out on this project,
I sort of assumed that private equity firms would go
after industries for wealthy people, because you know, that's where
the money is. But I was surprised by how many
industries or businesses private equity firms bought up that targeted
not the rich, but the poor and working class. You know,

(21:04):
whether we're talking about we sort of alluded to this earlier.
You know, prison services, mobile homes, for profit colleges, various
parts of the healthcare industry that target sort of lower
income and working class families. And I think the reason
for that buy and large is working class people have
fewer alternatives. So when you're talking about prison services, you

(21:26):
can lower the quality of care, or when you're talking
about mobile homes, you can raise the cost of the lot.
At least because folks literally don't have an alternative and
don't have another option.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, you taught you mentioned elsewhere in the book about
how like why ers are attractive to them, and it's
you know, the inelasticity of demand and the fact that
nobody really has has much say over where they are
when they get shot or have a heart attack, and
so they're like, bingo, there's these this consumer base isn't

(22:00):
going anywhere, and so we can function up as bad
as we want to, essentially, and we'll we'll be able
to spend very little and continue extracting money from people.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
It kind of just reminds me of just like you
were saying, like ambulances used to be free, that to
the point now we have like it's now in our consciousness.
Oh no, no, no, called ambulance. Yeah, don't do that. Don't
do that. And you're like, oh, that's the invisible hand
of private equity right there, just putting that into our minds.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
It's really interesting, you know, ambulances specifically, I think for
folks from our generation, like we didn't even really realize
that until pretty recently. You know, ambulances used to be
largely owned by municipalities. It wasn't until the nineteen nineties
and two thousands that you started having this privatization movement,
and private equity firms have gotten very active in ambulances.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
One of the really.

Speaker 4 (22:53):
Interesting things is it doesn't seem like they've done a
terribly great job managing them. There was a really interesting
expos in New York Times about them, about how sort
of a disproportionate number of ambulance companies owned by pe firms,
we're going bankrupt and going out of business and so forth.
But to take one step back, I mean, I think
emergency rooms are the really interesting story because two private

(23:14):
equity firms own the leading physician staffing companies for emergency rooms,
and according to research by some folks at Yale, really
the business model of these staffing companies is essentially to
staff the doctors at these emergency rooms in a way
strategically so that people pay surprise out of network bills.

(23:35):
So you go to a hospital, you think it's in
your network for your insurer, but you're actually treated by
a doctor who works for a different hospital and as
a result, have to paint out of network bill.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
So yeah, it's an area, Yeah, go ahead, it's just trick.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
It's adding confusion, adding complexity to the system so that
they can extract fees without delivering any value whatsoever. Like
the really seems to be Sorry, let's take a quick
break and I yeah, I want to kind of come
back and just look further at the track record because
it really, like the number of examples you give really

(24:12):
suggests this is the model. Like this is what they do.
They come in, they make it worse. They somehow get
so rich that they can build Chinese temples at their
birthday party.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
With Gwen Stefani.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yes, with Gwen Stefani, And we're back. So that that
story about how their insight into staffing was to trick
people into using doctors outside of their network is just

(24:48):
one of the stories in your book that is incredibly infuriating.
There's also the worst hacking disaster in US history.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Do you want to talk.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
About how that came about? In partnershi ship with private equity.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Yeah, so two private equity firms bought up the tech
company Solar Winds, which provides a lot of sort of
like boring it and security services to companies. Looking through
the documents in Solar Winds public filings, it appears that
after it was bought by a private equity firm. Staffing
f company was cut, and, at least according to their

(25:22):
public disclosures, a lot of their engineering work was moved overseas,
including to, among other countries, Belarus, which is great. Yeah
in the news recently.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, oh Lukashenko, great guy.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
Yeah yeah yeah. Whether that's causal or not, Ultimately, Solar
Winds suffered what one government official called the greatest hack
in United States history. I believe the Department of Defense, Treasury,
State Justice, and others were all compromised, and at least
it appears on sort of initial reporting that the leaders

(25:55):
of the private equity firms may have dump stock in
advance of the public disclosure of that. Now there's an
investigation going on to that at the SEC. I don't
know what the outcome of it was, but it was
another example of you know, you have this industry, you
know sort of it security that really needs to be
thinking in terms of years and really decades for how

(26:15):
to make sure that you've got to secure a product
when you're working with the government and they're being bought
or controlled by private equity firms that are trying to
make a profit. You know, in a matter of months
or a manner of years, and it's just a very
different perspective for how to run these businesses.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's right.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
The I mean similar to the you know, getting involved
in er staffing. They also took over the operation of
nine to one one calls at one point, like just
all these things that Yeah, it just when you read
stories of businesses that become successful over the over a
long period of time, like it's really about fixating on

(26:58):
like how to do the one thing that they do
for customers, like better than anyone else. And time and
time again, it seems like when these private equity firms
come in, like it's just like that is the third
or fourth thing that they're interested and the most interesting

(27:18):
thing is delivering value for themselves and get yeah, financial success.
It's interesting, you know, you look at the biographies of
folks that run private equity firms and it's you know,
it's not a critique of them, it's not a surprise,
but you know, it's generally folks that do not have
experience in sales or it or engineering or marketing or logistics.

(27:41):
It's folks with a financial background, and so when they
approach these companies, typically you know, not always, but typically,
you know, what they're trying to make are essentially sort
of financial changes to these businesses that's going to you know,
get a fairly quick return.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (27:55):
You look at the diversity of what some of these
private equity firms buy into. You know, it's a plastic
logistics company, it's a municipal water service, and it's the
dating app bumble, you know, and it's like one person
doesn't really have the expertise to run all those different
kinds of companies.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, they just know how to make line go up right,
And it's sort of like, oh wait, what does that mean.
It's like, well, we're not gonna have enough nurses. I
don't know, man. But then when I look at these projections,
I like what I'm seeing, let's do that and figuring
out afterwards. What's really difficult is like we hear about
all this. It is so apparent to everyone, you know,
Like I think at this point even everyone listening is like, right, okay, okay,

(28:34):
pirate equity bad or like not not necessarily out here
for everyone's best interest. But then you think about like
a lot of the examples that you give in your book,
like it's also very very hard to hold these fucking
people to account because of the nature of like all
of the advantages that these companies have, whether it's through lobbying,

(28:55):
whether it's through like a revolving door of entities that
have been in government that end up there and then
end up lobbying people they already know on the hill
and things like that, or just the amount of complex
like like hYP like whack a mole of who owns
this thing that all come together because I think a
lot of the times, especially when we talk about these issues,
like on our show, we're like, well, what's the problem?

(29:17):
Why can't it why can't it stop? Right? Like it's
we get it. We're seeing it. Like the cost is
people losing their lives, the cost is people going bankrupt,
the cost is untold suffering. And then you know, to
be real, it's like, hey man, we're looking at you
the FEDS. What's going on? Uh? And I know you've
said this too, like it's the federal Like the DOJ
is not the only entity that can go after this,

(29:39):
but like, how how do you explain Like when people
talk about the frustration of like well then what like
something's out of give where where will it give it
will be Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Yeah, it's a huge issue because you know, as you
started off, you know, private equity I think has been uniquely.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Successful in lobbying.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
You know, if you look at who private equity firms
are hired, its former Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, two
former Speakers of the House, to a vice president, former
chair people of the FCC and SEC. I mean, it's
a really deep bench, and that means that they have
just been extraordinarily successful at sort of advancing their legislative

(30:21):
and regulatory agenda. I think the other challenge that we've got,
and I think you hit on this exactly right, is
it's really hard for ordinary people to hold private equity
firms accountable. We have this doctrine called corporate veil piercing,
which means that it's very hard to hold an investor
responsible for the actions of the company that they invest in.

(30:41):
That makes sense for you and me, where we've got
our little Vanguard account and have like one share of
stock and a company, you know, we don't really have
much to say over them. That doctrine doesn't necessarily make
sense for a private equity firm that has a controlling
stake in these businesses. And can essentially tell them what
to do. And then lastly, I mean, I think you
hit the point exactly right, which is a lot of
times it's just hard to even figure out who owns

(31:03):
what and who to sue. I talked with folks that
sue nursing homes on behalf of families whose you know,
parents died or were injured or whatever it happens to be,
and they're telling me, you know, look, these guys have
these really broke organizational structures where there are shifting assets
across multiple shell companies and you know, sort of across
different shells, and it's really hard to figure out who

(31:26):
is responsible and who has the assets to recover. So
it's a really tough problem.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, and something that's becoming normal too, Like other industries
are like you know, what kind of works is if
you kind of spread it all around and no one
knows how to get like seek damages. Right.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, you tell us one really memorable story about Ashford,
which is, you know, a Franciscan University of the Prairies
is what it's called, but it's like a really small
college run by nuns, and then it gets taken over
and turned into Ashford University which becomes this you know,
Phoenix University like adjacent thing, and it's really this like

(32:05):
outraging thing. And then you also mentioned that like the
private equity firm that now runs it is Warburg Pinkus,
which is run by Obama's former Treasury Secrety Secretary Tim Geitner.
And it's just like you just see that over and
over again, like the amount of people from positions of

(32:28):
power who like know how things work better than anybody.
You know, most people listening to this and like know
how things really work behind the scenes, are are going
into private equity and it just really feels like a eluding,
a plundering that's happening.

Speaker 4 (32:47):
I yeah, I heard this third hand, so I don't
know how true it is. But there was a senior
government official who ended up doing some work for a
private equity firm, and somebody was chiding them and they said, look,
you know, it's not who's working for private equity, it's
who isn't working for private equity right now. So it's
it's pretty extraordinary the breadth of their success.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Right And just like the greed, how it compounds itself,
you know, because now it's like it seems like you're
almost incentivized to get into private equity because of how
little repercussions people face. And I'm curious, like when you
have a case like like the ones we've talked about,
when it's like, yeah, man, like they own this company

(33:26):
and they basically started throttling back their level of care
which led to someone losing their life. Okay, well, then
tell me who owns this and that person's responsible. Like
when these cases get like dismissedter things, is that the
cynical part of like I think the cynical shorthand version
of someone who believes in how like cronyism works and
things like that, believe that like, oh, the judges are

(33:47):
in on it too. Everybody's in on this, that's why
it's happening. But I think you've also raised the point
that it's not necessarily like like there's there's a huge
barrier to get over, which is informing people of how
this even works too, and like having enough public pressure
like around this idea or this industry of private equity
that gets people to sort of be on the same

(34:08):
page to understand the issues.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah, you know, I think one of the challenges that
we've got is exactly what you're saying is education. And
that's not just educating you know, sort of your listeners
or you know people and you know, you know people
that are just generally interested in this topic. It's also
informing judges, people in government, you know, what private equity
is and what the practical consequences are. One of the
challenges that I think people who are critical of the

(34:33):
private equity business model have is, you know, private equity
firms have an enormous amount of money to lobby and
to litigate their issues, and the other side, you know,
just has a fraction to do the same thing. You know,
one of the cases was over this obscure sort of
retirement law issue, and at stake was like four point
five million dollars for the private equity firm. It was

(34:55):
essentially a rounding error. They spent ten years litigating the
case in order not to have to pay out because
they have the resources to do it, and they wanted
to set the precedent that they could. And so, you know,
we got to inform people, and we've also got to
figure out how to sort of empower activists and folks
that want to work on this stuff so that they
can do this work for the long.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Term, right, can we can we just list some of
the industries where people might have seen their work, because
it's just going back to that initial statement about like
we have an anecdotally everyone seems to have a feeling
that things are getting worse, but you know, it's kind
of hard to we don't have much to compare it to.

(35:36):
But they're you know, there's presence in the dental industry,
veterinary I think you mentioned grocery stores at one point
that yea, you know, they're one of the reasons they're
like too grocery stores in the in the country that
didn't used to be the case.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yeah, yeah, So private equity is you know, I don't
want to overstate the case, but they they're active in
you know, most most every industry that you can think of,
whether you're talking about sort of retail things we were
talking about toys, r US and stuff earlier, or grocery stores.
As you say, when we're talking about healthcare, it's not
just emergency rooms and ambulances. It's ordinary sort of obgyn

(36:14):
and urgent care clinics buying up literal insurance companies, you know,
life insurance claims, worker compensation companies to things like manufacturing infrastructure.
In some places, private equity firms literally bought up the
municipal water services that you might use to drink, you know,
water from your tap.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
How'd that work out for them?

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Unfortunately, it didn't work out terribly well. So the private
equity firm operated with as a joint venture ultimately dramatically
raised the price for users to such an extent that
local reporters were saying that people quote unquote became water nazis,
would time their family members in the shower and would
only buy flowers that didn't require a lot of water. So, unfortunately,

(36:58):
that's a contract that those two cities are now going
to have to sit with for the next thirty years
or so because of how is how is negotiated. But
to the extent you're interested in these things and you're
concerned about a business, you know, private equity firms rarely
advertise their ownership. So what you should do is google
the company name and just add private equity and see
what comes up.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, chances are it's almost like what industries aren't they
involved in? It might be an easier question. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah,
they're not behind the push for medicare for all. I'll
tell you that they don't have they don't have a
dog in that fight unless it's on the other side
of it.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
Yeah, I don't think they're active on that one.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Yeah. Interesting, how do you talk about it?

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Like, I've there's been in a couple of social settings
since reading your book and just been like, yeah, it's crazy,
but they unable to like really fully you know, put
into words because it's the problems like so big and
so acute. But like, how do you usually introduce the

(37:58):
idea of your book to people, Like when you're just
like talking to them at a cocktail party or something.

Speaker 4 (38:03):
I always explain the basic business model, and I say
that private equity is going to transform the country in
this decade the way that big tech did in the
last decade and subprime lenders did in the decade before that. Yeah,
And I say, what, the three basic problems are short termism,
a lot of dead and fees, and insulation from liability.
And if we can fix those three things, we can
basically solve the problem.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Yeah. And that's kind of another thing I want to
solving the problem because again, a lot of the times
it's easy to fall into the nihilism of being like,
well this is it, Like I don't know, like I
don't even know, we don't even know who to sue.
You've talked about how like again, activists have helped to
like you know, offset or alleviate the cost of like

(38:43):
phone calls from prisons, you know, like actually have made
headway there, and like that's a victory. What are some
other like is what are some other specific areas where
we are seeing some bit of the clwing back of
the fuckery as it were.

Speaker 4 (38:59):
So I I think the prison area is really encouraging. So,
you know, private equity firms bought up prison phone companies,
started charging extremely high rates for these short, fifteen minute calls.
This was a many year effort to sort of make
progress here. Ultimately, you know, they were able. Activists were
able to get legislation passed in cities New York and

(39:20):
San Francisco capping rates for phone calls, then passed state
legislation in Connecticut, and ultimately pass federal legislation. So they
were really really effective working on this specific issue. Beyond that,
there's been really good work on For instance, you know,
we were talking about nursing homes. There's rulemaking going on
right now at the Department of Health and Human Services
to try to establish national standards from minimum staffing criteria

(39:44):
for nursing homes, which will be absolutely transformative. So I
think when activists have chosen really specific issues where the
effect on people is clear, I actually think that they've
been really successful. You know, private equity firms have the money,
but activists have the people on that, and I think
they've shown that they've been actually able to get a
lot done.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Right, So rather than being like when you're gonna pass
the down with private equity bill, it's like about kind
of getting a little more specific in a way that
connects to people. Because again, like like we're saying at
the top, just saying the word it becomes nebulous and
abstract and I'm like, I don't even know what name,
yeah versus shouldn't there be a number, like a minimum

(40:26):
number of staff in a nursing home so someone doesn't
like like needlessly lose their life and be like yeah, yeah, yeah,
yah yeah yeah. That part But then again is there
is there is there a similar thing that gets at
the accountability part, because I think that's the part that
really like frustrates me is how easily they can walk
and hide behind being like I don't know, I don't

(40:47):
own it. I just tell these funds what to do
in the Malthain that that's that's where it ends. So
I don't know where the buck stops. What are is there?
Like where can people put their energy in terms of
like finding that part out or at least making that
augmenting that movement a bit.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Yeah, No, I think that's a really good question. And
you know you're talking about private equity being a boring term,
like they're working to make it even more boring. A
lot of the leading firms now I don't even call
themselves private equity firms anymore. There are alternative asset managers,
so be on the lookout for those.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Cool. Yeah, so interesting. So what is it where like
it wears flannel and has a nosering and like has
Doc Martins Like yeah, like the alternative rock movement, but all.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Asset management actually sort of inheriting a grunge style fund
just kind of like being an all band in the nineties.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
Exactly, so they you know, in terms of sort of
the deeper sort of accountability issues. Obviously, Congress is one
sort of avenue, and there's important legislation, you know, sort
of being proposed there. But I actually think that there
are a lot of levers of power here, whether you're
talking about federal regulators like the SEC, Treasury, FED, and
so forth, but also states and localities. You know, we're

(41:57):
talking about some of these tactics that I think can
be harmful for companies in the long term, you know,
sale lease backs, dividend recapitalizations. States could just simply say,
you know, we're going to legislate to say, if the
company's headquartered in our district, you know, in our jurisdiction,
you can't do some of these tactics, or if you
do them and the company goes bankrupt, the workers are
going to get paid first. And I actually think that

(42:19):
there really is interest at the state level on this.
But we've got to you know, folks need to draft
up the legislation and there needs to be the push
for it. I think that's where the real change is
going to happen in the next few years.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Right towards the end of your book, you talk about
different scenarios that the country could take, and some people
financially think it's like Japan and the eighties and nineties
like heading for a financial fall, and some people think
it's like whymar Germany, and but you kind of say,

(42:49):
there's also this hopeful possibility that it's like America at
the turn of the twenty, like nineteen oh three, and
you know, emphasize that we and really today don't recognize
how bad it was at that time and how like
incremental the changes were. We just see, oh, in the

(43:10):
earliest twentieth century, the New Deal happened, so must have
been must have been good. There were Gatsby parties, and
then the New Deal came through in response to how
lavish the Gatsby parties were. But it was generations of
people working on very specific changes, right, that got us

(43:31):
out out of that very similar situation where it was
just unregulated capital running roughshot over the country.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, the Gilded Age worked wonderfully for a select few people,
but was a miserrating for you know, so many. Whether
it was the movement to stop the labor movement to
use the antixrust laws to actually break up labor unions
but protect monopolies, the movement actually to rescind suffrage for
working class people in New York and the institution of

(44:00):
Jim Crow in the South, that was endorsed by the
New York Times. I think you said, right, yeah, yeah,
the New York Times endorsed, yeah, rescinding suffrage for I
think working class white men. So but you know, in
some ways it was it was a politics or an
economy that's very similar to ours. The trusts of the
early twentieth century legally are very similar to how private

(44:22):
equity firms work. And a century ago we managed to
constrain the trust you know, we created the first you know,
you know, the most robust anti trust laws. We created
the Federal Trade Commission. We passed labor laws, environmental laws,
passed women's suffrage, and so forth. It was a time
that was really really transformative for the country and ultimately,

(44:42):
you know, sort of set the stage for sort of
the greatest moment in American middle class history, you know,
the nineteen forties and fifties. And so if we've done
it once, we can do it again. We just need
to have the patience and the will to do so.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, And a way to offset all the lobbying efforts,
which I'm sure if the states start saying things like yeah,
we're thinking about enacting some laws that would really constrain
private equity. You're just going to start seeing as like,
don't vote for this because we're going to leave your
state and you're going to be broke, so don't even
think about it, and then off we go. And I
think part of that is for people to really understand
the threat that this sort of untethered greed operates and

(45:20):
how it affects us in ways that are just so tangible,
but yet we think are like again, like for me,
I was like, there's just so nebulous. I'm like, it's
just part of this vast thing of all the money
moving in one direction versus also very specific groups of
people looking at it in this way, and we're just
sort of experiencing the lack of investment on the other side.

(45:41):
I wonder how many triangle shirtwaist fires it'll take for
us to wake up out of this one, because I
feel like we're averaging like one a day.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean you sort of look
at the number of legal tragedies that are happening in
private equity portfolio companies, and yet the private equity firms
you know, are rarely held to come I will say
just you know, as a as a workaday, you know, bureaucrat,
I will say that, don't underestimate your power and influence
as a person outside of government. People inside a government

(46:12):
listen to complaints, and you know, if you're saying this
is a broken system, this is not working, it really
empowers people in a bureaucracy to try it, you know,
who want to do the right thing, to feel like
they've got people on their side. So I felt that personally.
I know others people do do too, So I I
know that can be a somewhat frustrating thing to hear,

(46:33):
but it really does make a difference for folks.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
And yeah, just not having it happen quietly and visibly
like that when when you just tell this story, it
is the sort of story that people respond to. It
is an all out war being wage on the lives
of people who aren't extremely wealthy by people who are extremely,
extremely wealthy. Like it's just it is that simple. It's

(46:58):
they they are taking away comforts and you know, things
that people rely on and getting rich.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Off of it.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
It's pretty pretty straightforward. And I'm glad you told the
story in your book. I'm hoping more, more and more
people kind of continue to tell it. So and thanks
for coming on and talking less about it.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
And yeah, I got to say, normally I don't talk
to the Feds, but this has been fantastic.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Well, thank you guys so much for the time. I
really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, where can people well you remind us the name
of the book and where people can read it and
all that good stuff.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
It's plunder private equities, plans to pillage America, and you
can buy it anywhere you might buy a.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Book, perfect or Barnes and Noble also private equity. I
think they might have been. Yeah. Yeah, Brendan Blue, thanks
for coming on. Appreciate it, Thank you so much. All Right,
that was our interview with Brendan Man. I learned a
lot from this book.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
I feel like, you know how, when I read a
New Yorker article, I'll like reference it at least five
times over the course of the next week, like this
is its own for for U hos, Like this is
all I'm going to be referencing from now on.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Wait, so is this going to push out coal gas
study Havan syndrome. So those are just the those are
the keepers, Those are the ones that those are like
that try you and God of your mind. Yeah exactly, Yeah,
those will not be usurped. But yeah, again, I think
it's it's so helpful to like be able to be

(48:25):
like that's why these certain things got shitty, yeah, you know,
or like again like toy store.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
The toy store really fucking did it for me.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
Man.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
That was the one where I was like, oh, yeah,
there's no reason there shouldn't be like kids still yeah,
I can speak kids really still fucking like toys, I
can tell you that much. Now we just have the
toy section of Target and there are no toy stores.
And I remember at the end of the Toys r
us run, like going to Toys r Us to like

(48:55):
for a kid's birthday party, get get a toy, and
it was just wildly understaffed, and it looked and like
it looked like Sears did when it was going out
of business, you know, like they're the floors are kind
of torn up, like think they're just like boxes of
like palettes laying around because they just are totally understaffed.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
And it makes total sense that they just you know,
privact that these workers are lazy, right exactly, which is
what I was yelling, but you know what, but that
is the kind of shit older people was saying. Of course,
they're like, I don't know what the hell happened here?
These people are so lazy. And then you're like, no,
it's being like sucked the life sucked out of it
from the inside financially, and what you're seeing is like

(49:38):
the husk of a once operating business.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Yeah, and this is the fact that this is like
like a an epidemic that is across the entire economy,
like more people are being asked to do more work
or fewer people are being asked to do more work,
like just everywhere, and so yeah, everybody's going to be
like immiserated as you know, like I think he used

(50:04):
to that word. And really, you know, both on the
customer side and on the employee side, these companies absolutely
spread misery as part of their business model. Yeah, and
become the billionaires.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
That's the wild part too, is like you get you know,
we talk about all the time how like human life
gets reduced to like a number figure on a spreadsheet,
and that's truly how these people are looking at it.
When you have only guys who have finance brain being like, yeah, yeah,
I can help operate a healthcare provider. Watch this snip

(50:39):
snip snip, and then you know, we just continue to
talk about the the ongoing movement of privatization and how
that's only going to lead to fucking disaster. Yeah. It
also made me realize too, like when I was lobbying
for for profit colleges, like how like the for profit
college section is really wild. I mean that was the

(50:59):
thing that help loosen my brain to be like I
don't I can't be doing this, Like I can't be
consulting like this at all. But then really, even then,
the private equity part was a little bit abstract to me, sure,
like I was only the company levels the company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway,
I'm stupid and that's easy to say now.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
But we yeah, we're we're all part of this system
that has just been attacked invisibly. And this is the
first time I've just seen somebody say it out let,
you know, in print, just be like, this is the company,
this is what they're doing. It is like the most
deeply anti I don't know, it's just it's it's so

(51:40):
clear cut. It just seems wild that nobody said it
out loud, up to this point.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah, people probably have been.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
It's wild that I haven't read it to this point,
and it's probably because the phrase private equity made my
brain go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
I also blame the New Yorker from not making a
cartoon about it, which thank you. Understand. All right, we're
gonna take one more break.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
We're gonna come back and hear from a reader who
has some job experience that is somewhat related to this.
It seems like it's operating the same principles.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
With one of the industries we're just talking about.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah, we'll be right back, and we're back. And I
was talking to a former guest this weekend. I'm not
gonna out them, but like when I was taught as

(52:32):
I'm actually the two thousand episodes and trying to go back,
as I was saying to Brandon, like after reading his book,
I've tried to speak to it everywhere because it's like
all I can think about. And one of the people
I spoke to was like dental care. That was the
one when I was like, it's like this, it's veterinary care,

(52:53):
it's nine to one one call centers, it's retirement homes,
it's dental care. Like dental care is the one that
jumped out. They were like, yeah, you know, I have
lived both in the US and in another country, and
the US like you would see the dentists like over
and over and over with the same problem. They'd just
be like, I don't know, man, like brushmore, you know,

(53:14):
and just give you the same solution and just seemed
taxed and overwhelmed. And then like when we're able to
have this problem fixed and oh, hey.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Use some of a bitch. No, I mean I think, yeah,
we can justin you can censor that.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
But anyways, so the dental industry, we have a listener
who works in billing in the dental industry and also
works with insurance companies. Again, this similar logic in that
even without even if the listener's company is not owned
by private equity, it seems to operate on a similar

(53:59):
logic of like making things really profitably for them, unprofitably
for the consumer, very complicated, very annoying to deal with.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
When it comes to insurance, it's like incentivized bumbling and
incentivized miscommunication or non communication. And then be like, oh,
you know here from us, well you owe us that.
Now we got those interests on top of that, now
you owe us more money. But shout out to this listener,
and I believe we'll be okay using your name because
it is a handle, We'll call this person Pirate Pam. Yeah,
which is actually great because I was talking calling it

(54:32):
pirate Equity. But anyway, Pirate Pam has been saying, you know,
she's like, you know, I work in dental insurance, and
I can tell you a little bit about how like
how wacky it is. And when I when we started
talking on discord, I was like, oh no, walk me
through it a little bit. And I said, when did
you realize how fucked up shit was with like in
dental insurance and how you work with it? And this
is what you said quote. I think it was just

(54:53):
a lot of disbelief. I went to business school black
and was taught how important it was to close out
your accounts and be efficient the counting. I used to
work for a medium large private manufacturing company, and we
were all about production efficiency and technology improvement. Then I
found out that many times insurance companies will be inefficient
with their claims processing as a strategy. Allegedly, Okay, we're

(55:15):
putting that there legally, my boss actually told me that
when I started. My boss actually told me that when
I started, and I honestly didn't believe him until I
saw it for myself. They quote lose our claims all
the time and have a terrible back end system for
cataloging information. I knew that insurance companies were evil and
that they raised rates, refuse to cover procedures, et cetera,

(55:35):
but just didn't expect to trickle all the way down
to their day to day business off business processes. I
have some pretty blatant examples that just boil my blood.
It has really radicalized me even further to the point
where I don't even believe people should be able to
purchase private insurance on top of universal coverage. They will
do anything and everything in their power to squeeze profit out.

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Of people in need, so basically not deliver the thing
that it is their job to deliver. Which yes, yeah,
that is interesting to hear, because you know, like the
whole thing, the whole logic of the universe that is
created in this story about private equity in Pirate Pam's
story about what it's completely like the central gravitational like force,

(56:20):
like the gravitational center of the entire like capitalistic enterprise
was supposed to be to deliver value in exchange for money, right,
Like that that's what a business is designed to do,
is to solve a problem, address a need something. And
the better you are at that, the more likely you

(56:41):
are to get repeat customer. Like there's just this very
central core gravitational center, like economic like center, central truth
that is supposed to be at work. And I think
we we've just like crossed over to a place where
like that seems even like that seems idealistic for me

(57:02):
to even say that at this point.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Right, Or it's kind of like what Brendan said, there's
two versions, right, there's the version for working people, right,
and you have no alternatives and you're basically checkmated there.
And then if you have a little bit more money,
then you do have the ability to be like, well,
I'm not going to stand for this specific kind of treatment. Yeah,
And do you just see how much that chasm just
grows more and more and more as the companies that

(57:24):
are like quote unquote smarter, like you got to go
after like the working people businesses. Yeah, because if you
own every dermatology practice in a county, what are they
gonna do leave the county for cheaper rates. No, Now
we determine what the market is and it's you know,
rinse and repeat.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
The whole enterprise on the private equity side, like really
resembles a Ponzi scheme. So like that when I was
asking him, like about how this is like the new
hot place to work in the world of finance, Like
that's It's it's not just that like these are isolated
companies doing this, it's also like the like people are
seeing that this is a system that works and makes

(58:03):
you incredibly wealthy, and like that in that industry is
like kind of what is worshiped and held up and
you know, pursued by other people who work in that industry.
And then also like on the level of you know,
we've talked before about how it seems like we're increasingly
interested in scams because it feels like the entire economy

(58:25):
has turned into a scam. Like these most successful companies
of the past ten years, the ones who have become
as you know, big as Amazon and Walmart, suddenly without
us ever learning their names, like they are doing it
by extracting fees, and you know that that is the
mo of the moment, and so of course, like it's

(58:47):
going to trickle down everywhere. Like people aren't stupid, they
recognize what's being done to them. They're just without power
or without people advocating on their behalf, or without options, right.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
And I think that's why we're kind of at the
end of that discussion with Brendan. It's like you go
from fighting an invisible enemy to now beginning to define
at least one very specific kind and seeing how it works.
Among many other things that are moving in are like
global economy. But I want to add the part where
I asked pirate Pam. I said, can you just talk

(59:19):
about like one thing you deal with and you're like,
these people are fucking around like that, you know this
is bullshit and said quote one instance was when I
had to send a bunch of documentation and X rays
for a claim that they didn't want to pay the insurance.
We got a letter from the insurance company that they
had received all of our documentation and that we didn't
need to do anything else. I call them out a
month or so later. These appeals can take a while,

(59:41):
and they said they had never received any of it
from us. We also have a lot where we send
it two to three times and they still claim they
have never received anything. So again, just part of like
the inefficiency, whether it's like you know, intentional or just
part and parcel of understaffing, whatever, it tends to benefit
you know, them in the LA long term, long term

(01:00:01):
we talket for them to be inefficient. Yeah, and we are. Yeah,
you realize how much you know. There are other examples
from that book that are just wild about like, yeah,
you buy like a clothing store and then you're like, yeah,
I guess what now you're only gonna buy clothes from
this other company we own, right, Yeah, yeah, like the
Mike Tyson meme with the pigeons saying now kiss. But

(01:00:23):
just like the corporate Raider for like you're like, what,
we don't even buy clothes and just like no, no,
you do you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
We don't care about you? Yeah yeah, and and then
we're just like man, J Crew really lost it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
They really got real crappy, got real crappy. All of
a sudden, Toys r US just started having palettes of
toys half ripped open laying around when you walked in.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
That was weird. Yeah, that's a new policy. No, no,
you're seeing the you're seeing the thing turned into a
ghost in real time.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Yeah, so wild the comparison. Like, I do think a
lot about the how the Gilded Age, the last Gilded
Age in the US like somehow turned into the New
Deal and like they're being actually beneficial to America socialism
in a lot of cases. And if we could do
that without the racism that the first New Deal had,

(01:01:23):
like incremental utopia jack like just but these those things
did happen incrementally, right, But yeah, I mean that's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
A lot of work, and I honestly I think that's
why we see a lot of emphasis from the powers
that be to like try and make younger people as
ignorant as possible, or make them like take back their
ability to vote by raising the voting age. There's a
lot where I think already I think just existing in
the United States is probably one of the most potent

(01:01:56):
radicalizing forces right now for young people merely alive and
observing things, and hopefully that manifests into like a huge
wave of like you know that the numbers are there
to have like bigger changes rather than people that are
holding onto the scraps of yesteryear.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Yeah, I would highly recommend people people check out this
book if that conversation was interesting to you. Yeah, Miles,
I would highly recommend they check out you on social media.
Where can we find you?

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
My goodness to find me on Twitter, Instagram at Miles
of Gray. Check out Miles and Jack on our basketball
I said, Miles, and I went third person on them. Anyway,
find us on our basketball podcast. Miles and Jack got
Matt Boosti's And if you're going to be in Las
Vegas for NBA con, well, guess what. Guess what will
your boys, because we're going to be on there doing

(01:02:47):
a couple of live shows. And hey, if you got
recommendations about Vegas, you want to take us out for
a spin in your cool Lamborghini or helicopter ride to
the Grand Cable on either of those things. But oh,
I'll I'll hop in. I'll hop in a Lambeau with
a listener. I don't care. I don't know where that
ends up. Finally, after that question, how I get to Yeah,

(01:03:09):
how do I get the Lambeau? I had somebody rent
one in Vegas and we got in it. Uh, And
then you can find me on fort with Sophia Alexandra
talking non political, non serious stuff like ninety day fiance
or blind.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
All right, and is there a work a media that
you've been enjoying.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Uh, honestly I have. It's probably from Uh. I got
a shout out again. We talked about this on the
Trending episode yesterday at Underscore ched Earthling erb the Provinciaga
who definitely got the Portuguese flag flyne in that Twitter
display name put us onto this like TikTok, fucking like

(01:03:47):
just mashup of all these like kids protect like just
trying the new Grimace Shake from McDonald's and then just
ending up in like the worst horrifying physical positions or situation.
So yeah, shout out to shout out to that video.
It's I don't know, I don't know what you search.
Just search Grimace Shake causing irreversible damage to society.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Just go look at Miles' likes on Twitter.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
You know how about this, Gonna retweet it? There you go,
that makes it easy. Boom, check that out. Check that out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien.
A couple of tweets I enjoyed over the weekend picture
of George Bush finding out about nine to eleven and
somebody saying a second Russia has hit the Russia, which
I thought summed it up pretty nicely what it felt
like at first. Tarn At Young Titty tweeted, the baby

(01:04:39):
is kicking. He must like vodka Red bulls. Oh my fascinating,
tweeted a picture of the founder of Gucci and said
the life of Gucci O Gucci, founder of Gucci, and
Zach Raffio retweeted that and said the life of Dunky
No Duncan, founder of Duncan, and then Sydney Battle tweeted,

(01:05:02):
whoever came up with the word morsels was correct?

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah, perfectly named. Yeah, where'd that come from? Maybe some
etymologies in the store? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're
at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram, we have a Facebook
fanpage and a website Daily zeikeys dot com where we
posts our episodes and our footnotes. So we take off
to the information that we talked about in today's episode
as well as a song that we.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Think you might enjoy. That was with the song that
people might enjoy, Oh well, guess what You've died and
gone to Babe Heaven because that's the name of this
West London band, Babe Heaven, really great band. This tracks
just like again. It's called make Me Wanna and apparently
like this group started off with like two friends who
were like really in the groups like Massive Attack and

(01:05:49):
stuff and trip hop and then slowly started getting their
band together and y'all are making some good music now.
If you like Massive Attack and stuff like that Cocktat Twins,
check this group out. But this is a track make
Me wand bye babe Head. All right, well we will
link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zeitgeist
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
To your favorite shows.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
That's going to do it for us this morning, back
this afternoon to tell you what's trending and we'll talk
to you all then Bye bye