The Carlyle Group plans to offer investors a long dated fund to profit on infrastructure projects. Carlyle Diversified Infrastructure Funds or CDIF has much in common with the other CDIFF, an infection in the colon that often plagues hospital patients with explosive diarrhea. Private equity is a financial virus that eats at public coffers, federal and state. It can result in debt backups, fee splattering and explosive profits for the wealthy.
Carlyle and then co-CEO Glenn Youngkin publicized with great fanfare its lead developer role for Port of Corpus Christi expansion at Harbor Island. It offered barely a peep when it reneged on its role, leaving a potential $400 million hole.
Youngkin went on to win the Virginia Governor's race for the Red Team and will have billions in state funding to steer to his former peers. I'm sure that's one reason Carlyle is pushing their version of CDIF. That and the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress that encourages public-private partnerships. The bill is also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF).
Youngkin's chief of staff Jeff Goettman is also a private equity underwriter (PEU). How will this team steer public funds to their greedy friends?
“Public private partnerships, private activity bonds, and asset recycling.” In the name of building world-class infrastructure, these lawmakers would sell it off in fire sales to private financiers.
Carlyle wants a big shot at Virginia and other states' public wallet. All are used to getting their way. I expect BIF to have frequent rounds of CDIF.
Update 1-22-22: "Weak taxation of the wealthy combined with anemic regulation of campaign fundraising have handed America's billionaires outsized political influence to go along with their huge economic clout." U.S. billionaires dumped a staggering $1.2 billion into the 2020 elections—a 39-fold increase compared to 2010. "In the 2010 election cycle, billionaires gave $19 million to Republicans and $11 million to Democrats," ATF noted. "By the 2020 cycle, those respective figures were $656 million and $539 million." They expect a return on their political investment (ROI).
