PEU for 401(k): Do You Trust the Marks?

My wise friend wrote: 

Trump Executive Order opens 401(k)s to alternative assets. The argument being made is these long duration assets are illiquid and should be kept in accounts which do not trade. 

Yet, without liquid markets and up to date marks (valuations), how does the individual investor know whether his actual portfolio results are coinciding with his long term objectives of retirement? 

What happens when the individual realizes at the end of his life cycle the assets he could not see were not marked correctly?  That individual had no opportunity to revise his retirement plans accordingly.  The outcome is that person is left deficient in assets and income. OOOPS!  

This is another Red Herring argument from the private equity industry to create FEE-FDOMS for themselves at the expense of the investor without ever coming to terms or held to account for their own failures in bad investments and excessive leverage.  How convenient for all the retail stooges left holding their bags of ****?

Small 401(k) holder, do you trust the PEU secondary fee information shared with you by your investment advisor?  CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost stated that her public pension fund does not share LP agreements or side letters with fund retirees.

I asked my wise friend, what chance does a 401(k) owner have of getting fee information regarding the secondary buy?  His reply:

Great question. None. They would prefer you to sue them before they release that information. Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwartzman's money went very far this election season along with the other partners in crime. They had Trump on TV today with a picture in the background but you could not see the head.  My wife asked me who do you think that's the picture of?   I told her I think it's Meyer Lansky (an infamous Mobster).

CalPERS was an early investor in The Carlyle Group, so surely there is institutional knowledge of how PEU fees work.

The game is which PEU expenses can be rolled onto the affiliate, which need to be passed on to LPs and what remains gets picked up by the sponsor (the PEU itself).  Rest assured as little as possible ends up on the sponsor's tab.  

Marks (valuations) questionable, fees opaque... exactly what no one wants in their 401(k).  Yet, that's what the Trump administration is pushing.  Flipping bizarre.

Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod/CryptoBro brethren.  Increasingly, more are one.

Update 8-8-25:  Naked Capitalism ran a story titled "

‘Disaster in the Making’: Trump to Open 401(k)s to Crypto, Private Equity Vultures

The piece and the comments are well worth the read.  Zero Hedge ran a straight up news story on the executive order, however, it got eviscerated in the comments.

Conflicted Trump Wants Crypto in Your 401(k)

"Conflicted" is the Trump brand, so it's understandable Trump II, the digital Caligula, is staunchly defending it.  

How dare a thoroughly vetted Intel CEO horn in Trump's "conflicted" territory?  CNBC was kind enough to show the juxtaposition on their website (top image).  

I took the liberty of adding a few other stories about the Trump crypto conflagration, a proverbial den of thieves.

Private equity underwriters (PEU) also win under Trump's executive order. At least one financial advisor warned about adding PEU holdings to 401(k)s.

Trump's other key big tech strategy is AI.  That is a Pandora's box full of trouble.

Fortunately other Americans have insight into our bizarre government, operating in its very own fantasy world. 

 I am grateful to South Park for cutting straight to the nuts.  Vice President JD Vance, former PEU and TechGod, worked for Peter Theil, another PEU/TechGod with his own fantasy island.

Hey big guy, relax....The little people need a laugh, otherwise they might cry over:

Politicians Red & Blue love PEU, and their new TechGod/CryptoBro brethren.  Increasingly, more are one.

Update 8-8-25:   Trump tossed a tariff on gold bars of specific sizes.  Think of it like golf.  Trump kicked gold's ball into the woods while his caddy dropped his crypto (digital gold) ball one foot from the hole.

Dominari Board of Advisors: Exclusive Club

All members of Dominari Holding's Board of Advisors are executives with the Trump Organization.

Many of those same names appear as investors of American Bitcoin in SEC filings.

Merger documents reveal Dominari's investment in American Bitcoin can be sold sooner than other insiders.

Fee generating, pass through organizations produce Mafia like income streams.  In this case the Don is the Donald.  He does you favors and you return the favor five-fold.

That's how you double your net worth in a few short years and get to leave office with your own taxpayer refurbished luxury jet.  Any Epstein stains should be long removed by then.

Update 8-7-25:  Trump II, the digital Caligula, has the gall to call Intel's CEO conflicted.  Projection, drivel, diversion....pure Pablum

Update 8-8-25:   Trump tossed a tariff on gold bars of specific sizes.  Think of it like golf.  Trump kicked gold's ball into the woods while his caddy dropped his crypto (digital gold) ball one foot from the hole.

Champion Cheater: PEU Worthy

Would you buy crypto from this guy?  Golf cheats tend to be tax cheats, business cheats, wife cheats and overall sleazy people.  

Trump II (of the Jeffrey Epstein decades long friendship) wants to sell you his official $TRUMP memecoin, his wife's official memecoin, WLFI tokens, USD1 stablecoins and a bunch of foreign made MAGA merchandise (crap).

When the club championship is a joke and you happily excuse it, you are the punchline.  

Now envision the caddy is an accountant and the player is a private equity underwriter (PEU).  The ball drop is affiliate valuations.  Set that thing a foot from the hole and the PEU wins.  Pristine valuations enable better credit terms, support higher performance fees, higher bonuses and help sell new PEU offerings.

The Carlyle Group just sunk an eagle putt with their new $9 billion real estate fund and an earnings beat.  It's not a Trump II club championship but it may be similar in principle.

My wise friend noted:

They should call him T Rumpelstiltskin. He spins**** and Pockets COIN.

A chunk of every Trump related coin sale  lands in his pocket.  Jingle, jangle...DaddyShack has yet another angle... 

Update 8-8-25:  And he's "LAUGHING ALL THE WAY".....Jingle balls of the savage whim.  Ha, Ha, Ha....

Trump tossed a tariff on gold bars of specific sizes.  Think of it like golf.  Trump kicked gold's ball into the woods while his caddy dropped his crypto (digital gold) ball one foot from the hole.

Scrubbing Trump from Epstein Files

It's been decades since the federal government did this quality a scrub in a "investigation.  Trump II's name has been redacted in the Jeffrey Epstein files.  Trump will not give testimony regarding his interactions with Epstein and his child sex abuse victims.  

I imagine the Trump "Just Us" Department shopped the list of predators for Blue Team members and any never Trumpers of the Red version.  

The last time an investigation was so purposely hapless was the White House Lessons Learned Report after Hurricane Katrina.  The report omitted the hospital with the highest number of patient deaths, the LifeCare floor within Memorial Medical Center (owned by Tenet Healthcare).  The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU) bought (closed on) LifeCare weeks before Katrina made landfall.  

25 deaths LifeCare. 10 deaths Tenet's MMC = 35 total deaths

A year later Jeb Bush was appointed to the board of Tenet Healthcare.  

Time will reveal the rewards bestowed upon those keeping Trump's lying, cheating and philandering name out of the Epstein theater of the grossly absurd.

A new name for the "Just Us" Department?  Daddyshack.  Pam Bondi and James Comer know how to drop Trump's ball on the green and kick Bill Clinton's ball deep into the Arkansas back woods.

The irony is Trump's predatory behavior is Clintonesque.  PEU Birds of a feather should rot together.

Update:  

Carlyle reported stellar earnings from private credit and secondary PEU offerings.  Elon could put his money behind Epstein victims with NDA's.  Trump's inappropriate behavior with women is a biblical scroll.  Surely, some of them want to tell the truth about their perpetrator and need big money to violate any NDA.  

Carlyle was founded on political insider secrecy, so they know that game very, very well.

Update 8-8-25:  The White House held secret meetings on the Epstein crisis.  Trump instructed JD Vance to deny the meeting occurred.

Irreality

Trump II (who I call Pablum) fired the BLS Chief, a move comparable to private equity underwriter's (PEU) impact on accounting.  Both are for image management.

Numbers are to optimize Pablum's image or PEU internal rates of return (IRR) in each and every present moment.  

Welcome to irreality, also supported by AI's "garbage in - garbage out".

Truth Social should be called Blather Vindictive.

Congress and the Supremes are feckless against Trump II's savage whims.  

Render unto Pablum that which is Pablum's, which turns out to be everything in his upside down sphere.  Reality is another completely separate world.

Texas Floods: Failure of Leadership

The three top leaders responsible for disaster response in Kerr County were out of town or asleep the early morning of July 4th when 137 people died from flash flooding.  It took 27 days for the public to hear what little they did to warn people in harm's way.  Testimony was given to state officials, not the local governmental bodies to which they failed.

Fortune titled their article: 

Kerr County officials reveal they were asleep, out of town during night of catastrophic flood

Rep. Drew Darby stated:

"We have a lot of folks who have titles, but when the time came to act, they did not do so in a timely fashion." He added that the state pre-positioned assets for potential flooding so the idea that this came out of the blue and was totally unexpected did not wash with him.

Public testimony revealed the risk that people would lose their homes and businesses as they could not afford to rebuild.  The prospect arose of financial vultures, like BlackRock and private equity underwriters (PEU) swooping in and buying distressed properties for development and later flipping.  

The State of Texas has $26 billion in its rainy day fund.  Let's hope they use some of that to help little people recover from an extreme rain event.  However, it would be no surprise if they did otherwise.  The state has known what local officials failed to do that day and there are no signs they plan to hold them accountable.

Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and increasingly, more are one.  So it would be no surprise if the PEU boys win yet again.

Update:  Public testimony revealed Kerr County Commissioners pursuing the maximum property tax increase.  That's reminiscent of the February 2021 Winter Storm.  After having no power for five days in the bitter cold our electrical bills soared with new delivery charges.  

Some flood victims got an apology from elected officials.  That may be little consolation if their property tax bills increase while they are trying to rebuild.  Insurance, even in the best of circumstances, rarely provides the funds to fully replace that which was lost.  Floods are the bleakest in terms of insurance coverage.  

The other PEU connection to this disaster is through insurance company investments.  My wise friend wrote:

Isn't it interesting that Chinese regulators have allowed their insurance companies to purchase gold and the western regulators have allowed the private equity industry to take stakes in insurance companies to park their bad private equity stakes. 

I expect the insurance industry to ask state officials for subsidies for such disastrous events.  Property insurance rates are already ridiculous in Texas.  

Our local government is giving tax breaks to big tech, including energy hogging data centers.  There's a pattern here regarding who gets the subsidies and who is left high and dry after the flood. 

Update 8-4-25:  Seeking Alpha reported:

PE-backed insurers, in particular, have aggressively expanded into higher-yielding private placements.

If they have to sell these products due to increased claims, how might that work out?