Tuesday, June 5, 2012

PEU Reputation Rehab: Romney et al


Private equity framing went into overdrive this week. WaPo ran a number of pieces.  One focused on Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein and his heavyweight business and political connections
"Value Added: David Rubenstein and the art of the ‘get'
Another dealt with the PEU lobbying group
"Romney’s run motivates group to defend private equity’s image 
Forbes reported how Bain co-founder Mitt Romney is a minor player compared to his peers, like Carlyle's Rubenstein::

If the former governor’s goal was to accumulate as much money as possible, he certainly made a huge mistake in calling it quits at the dawn of private equity’s so-called golden age, when buyout funds raised by Bain and its rivals ballooned from the hundreds of millions to the tens of billions. But the more likely scenario is that Romney had a pretty good sense of the momentum the private equity industry had gathered and simply wanted to focus on family, philanthropy and, of course, public life.
Mitt was more valuable to the greed/power boys on the government side of the equation.  It's all about new capitalists shaping our world.  That means PEU...

Update 6-6-12:  President Bill Clinton and Rep. Steny Hoyer professed their PEU love.