Carlyle's Rubenstein Speaks at SALT Conference

Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein spoke from Las Vegas, the city of high rollers, last week.  TopNews reported:

In his opening remarks, David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group said that the it is important for the hedge fund industry and private-equity companies to explain what they do good to the community.

Private equity underwriters enjoyed an extra decade of preferred taxation via carried interest.  This came courtesy of both Red and Blue political parties.

The conference was attended by celebrity guests Will Smith and Kobe Bryant, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers as well as a popular rock band, the Killers.

How grateful are the highly paid greed and leverage boys?

There is a general feeling in the industry that the government is to blame for the troubles of the industry.

Skybridge Capital promoted their annual Alternatives Conference with:

The SALT 2016 Conference will take place from Tuesday, May 10^th – Friday, May 13^th at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference is committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities for the year ahead. With over 1,800 thought leaders, public policy officials, business professionals, investors and money managers from over 42 countries and 6 continents, the SALT Conference provides an unmatched opportunity for attendees from around the world to connect with global leaders and network with industry peers.

Past featured speakers have included President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, President Nicholas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prime Minister George Papandreou, Vice President Al Gore, Governor Mitt Romney, General David Petraeus, General Colin Powell, the Honorable Gordon Brown, Leon Panetta, Timothy Geithner, T. Boone Pickens, Sam Zell, Jamie Dinan, Dan Loeb, John Paulson, Paul Singer, David Tepper, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Magic Johnson and Francis Ford Coppola.

Note the members of both of America's corrupt political parties.  Many of the political figures listed above have or held a private equity job as managing director or special advisor.  They count on insider access for information that will steer their next profitgasm adventure.

It's odd that Mr. Rubenstein would be a speaker given Carlyle's abysmal performance in the hedge fund arena.  Investors have been fleeing from a number of Carlyle Group affiliated hedge funds.

Our hedge fund partnerships had outstanding redemption requests for $3.1 billion in the aggregate as of the beginning of the first quarter of 2016.

In the 1920's that would be known as a bank run.  Before the SALT crew can convince the wider community of their "good work", they need to show results to investors.  The conference symbolically closed on Friday the 13th in Sin City.  Enough said.

Update:  ValueWalk has the transcript of Rubenstein's Bloomberg interview at SALT.  The reporter gave Rubenstein choice in the first question, Trump or hedge funds?  That's the kind of hard hitting business questioning that got us back to the Gilded Age.  FinAlternatives did a story on Rubenstein's interviewing of Former Treasury Chiefs Bob Rubin and Larry Summers.

Update 5-22-16:  Market Realist summarized Rubenstein's SALT appearances.