Billionaire and private equity underwriter Robert L. Johnson suggested the U.S. government pay reparations to Black Americans for lost income due to slavery. Johnson said:
"Reparations would require the entire country to … admit that the result of slavery has been 200 years of systemic racism and for that reason Black folks have been denied $13-15 trillion of wealth."
Johnson said that reparations should reach Black Americans of all walks of life, even those who have accumulated wealth. Johnson named successful Black people such as Oprah Winfrey, Lebron James, Micheal Jordan, and even himself, of all being deserving of a check.
"If you're a successful Black business, the idea is you've had enough," Johnson told Vice News. "But no one ever asks if [a white-owned business] is too rich to benefit from investing in a football stadium, or receiving other benefits like preferential tax treatment or liquidity injections from the Federal Reserve."
Johnson is a joint venture partner with The Carlyle Group. Both Johnson and Carlyle are politically connected. PEUs receive preferential tax treatment via carried interest taxation. Bob Johnson defended his preferred taxation in 2010.
Despite claims by policymakers and others that raising taxes on so-called “carried interest” will only affect a small group of wealthy fund managers, the real impact will be felt by workers and small business owners on Main Street who desperately need access to private capital to survive, prosper and grow.
As a community banker how many liquidity injections has Urban Trust Bank received from the Federal Reserve window? His RLJ Western Assets received over $1.8 billion in funding from President Obama's Financial Stability Plan:
The RLJ Western Asset joint venture was one of the original nine fund managers pre-qualified to raise private investment capital and administer investing for the Legacy Securities Public-Private Investment Program.
A billionaire PEU with access to Department of Treasury 100% match funding wants a nearly $400,000 check from Uncle Sam? Pffftttttt. Consider what RLJ said to Mergers and Acquisitions in 2012
I accomplished what I did because I was the beneficiary of someone giving me a chance. Because John Malone, who at the time was the chairman of Telecommunications Inc., invested half a million dollars in my vision, BET became the most successful minority-owned company ever created and the first to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.
John Malone is a fundamental believer in the merit system and a non-believer in handouts.
RLJ took his billion dollar profit and joined the greed and leverage boys. Maybe two hundred years from now PEUs will atone for the harm they've done to working class people. There is zero chance of that happening as Politicians Red and Blue love PEU.
