Pardon Michael Milken for Redemption of PEU Class

Convicted financial manipulator Michael Milken hosts the American version of Davos, thus he rubs elbows with insiders of the American branded Government-Corporate Monstrosity.  As a thought leader of our "greed is great" economy where the spoils go to a select few, Milken is missing but one thing.  It's the right to return to his former playground, which morphed from leveraged buyouts to private equity.

Those close to President Donald Trump are reportedly pushing the idea of pardoning Michael Milken, the junk-bond king who personified the 1980s buy-and-destroy era.

Bloomberg News reports that support for pardoning Milken is coming from Trump confidants including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former White House spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, son-in-law Jared Kushner and attorney Rudy Giuliani, who prosecuted Milken when he was U.S. attorney in the late 1980s.

Sponsors of Milken's 2018 conference include Apollo (Leon Black), Ares Capital, Bain Capital, Blue Mountain Capital, Citadel, CVC Partners, Generation Investment Management (Al Gore), Leonard Green Partners, Moelis, and TCW (Carlyle Group affiliate).  The conference underwriter was WorldQuant.

The buy, bleed and flip era is here thanks to private equity underwriters.  They would love to have their founder rehabilitated.

President Trump is just the man to rewrite Milken's history of harm.   Trump is the great salesman, the P. T. Barnum for the greed and leverage boys.

He rehabbed the Kushner name with its interesting history. 

Jared’s father, Charles, spent 14 months in federal prison for tax evasion and witness tampering connected to a blackmail scheme against his sister’s husband. Jared’s sister, Nicole Meyer, is under federal investigation after promoting her family’s connections to the White House while soliciting Chinese investors for a pair of luxury apartment towers Kushner Cos. is building in Jersey City.

Jared and Ivanka spoke at a Milken Institute event on December 8, 2014.  The event was billed as a conversation with the couple, who are now key White House advisors.

 
I suggest a huge statue of Michael Milken be erected on the Washington Mall.  He is that foundational to our current leadership in business, the White House and Congress.

Update 9-24-18:  Milken's PEU peers were well represented at another gathering of the world's powerful, The Annual Bilderberg Meeting held this summer in Turin, Italy.  Perhaps they talked about pardoning their founding father of leveraged greed.

Update 10-22-19:  Bloomberg reported a Centerview staffer worked with a peer at Moelis to sell insider information and the pair received over $1 million for their dastardly deeds.

Update 2-18-20:  President Trump pardoned Milken, the purveyor of greed that so many emulate today.  

Update 9-28-21:  Milken got mention as a bad guy in 2010 for rumor mongering and naked short selling. 

Update 11-26-23:  The World Tribune reported:

Given all that has happened to this country over the past 35-odd years since Michael Milken, Leon Black and Jeffrey Epstein first appeared on the national scene, it is more than appropriate to ask out loud just how much influence this unholy trinity has had and continues to have over America’s political, corporate and cultural elites.

There is no crime amongst elites that cannot be forgiven.

Healthcare Ground Zero for PEU Flippers

America's absurdly expensive healthcare system is the latest target for private equity underwriters (PEU).  The greed and leverage boys  have doctors offices, hospices, home health agencies and specialty hospitals in their sites.  With each buyout private equity underwriters saddle healthcare companies with greater levels of debt. 

Their management practices focus on maximizing revenues to pay higher interest costs, management fees and pass cash to the PEU sponsor. 

Take KKR with its recent $10 billion deal for Envision Healthcare, a provider of emergency medicine physicians.  This comes on top of KKR's 2017 buyout of WebMD, an online provider of medical information, and a stake in PharMerica Corporation.

TPG Capital and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe will partner with Humana to buy Kindred Healthcare's home health, hospice and community care division, formerly known as Gentiva.  The two private equity firms will buy Kindred's specialty hospital division with its long term acute care hospitals and rehabilitation assets, both inpatient and outpatient.  Kindred had $3.2 billion in debt before the buyout.  It remains to be seen how much additional debt will be added after deal close.  

Ex Medicare Chief Tom Scully is a partner with WCAS and knows the healthcare tea leaves, especially under a Republican administration.  He has insights into reimbursement for all of Kindred's post acute care portfolio and WCAS plans to make big money off Kindred's pieces/parts.  

PEU greed will not solve the ills of America's dysfunctional healthcare system.  It is the plague that will cause widespread harm to countless citizens, through suboptimization of care and pirating of resources in an attempt to fill an insatiable desire for money.

Employees to Leave Shuttered Toys R Us with No Severance

The PEU boys reneged on employee severance pay mostly because they don't care about the little people.  Cash goes to sponsor via management fees, deal fees and dividend bleeding.  None is left for the hardworking people who've spent their career at Toys R. Us.  However, just before declaring bankruptcy Toys R Us paid executives $8 million in bonuses.

Employees reached out to Robert Menendez and Cory Booker for help.  That pair may toss Toys R Us employees an anchor.  Blue Team corporacrats work for the sponsors of the world, not the common man..

Update 6-19-18:  The Atlantic weighed in on the PEU stain left by the Toys R' Us bankruptcy.

Update7-2-19:  CBS News reported Toys R Us "workers are getting $2 million, a fraction of the $56 million in fees awarded to Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm representing Toys R Us, the decision is still a victory of sorts. That's because pensions and severance payments are labeled as unsecured debt when a company files Chapter 11, making them low priority and less likely to be paid.  A bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved the settlement to a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 33,000 former Toys R Us workers, a figure that means each will receive about $60."