NFL owners approved private equity underwriters (PEU) can now hold up to 10% of any team. The same PEUs that jacked up your workplace, rent you an overpriced single family dwelling, contribute to grossly overpriced healthcare services and are the behind the scenes owner of your exploding insurance costs can now profit alongside your favorite football team's owner.
PEU money will be used to renovate luxury suites in publicly supported stadiums, so those same PEUs can occupy those suites or rent them out for an absurd amount. Note: No one is talking about this money going back to the taxing entities that subsidized the team's stadium. practice facilities or development around those very sites.
Should these PEUs flip their stakes at some future date the taxes they pay on those profits will be at preferred "carried interest" rates. Despite two decades of public outcry the political Red and Blue teams have yet to get together to eliminate this widely hated PEU tax break.
Look for NFL approved PEU logos at a stadium near you. I just hope the PEU on your favorite team's hat isn't the one that fired half your department after they purchased your employer. That would cause some serious cognitive dissonance, which would be bad if that same PEU was trying to get you to buy their LP stakes for your retirement fund.
It's a crazy, mixed up PEU world where the greed and leverage boys continue to win. The barbarians took over European football (soccer) some time ago. The PEU gates are now open at American football. Sad, actually.
Fans, watch out for any PEU owners slinging backwash. I hope luxury suite redesigns take into account ways to protect paying fans sitting just below.
Update 9-8-24: A news story reported:
"the NFL also informed teams it will take a cut of private equity profits on sales of ownership stakes."
The PEU boys made the NFL into an LP (for free) or the league is now a taxing entity.
Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who served as the sugar daddy for GOP vice presidential hopeful JD Vance’s Senate run, who helped kill Gawker, and who names his companies after bits of JRR Tolkein lore, said he's considered leaving the US.
Thiel was born in Germany but his parents moved to the U.S. when he was a one year old. Thiel currently lives in the Los Angeles area. Malibu currently has a different billionaire battle over the theft of public beach sand.
Should Thiel leave the U.S. where might he land? Thiel's corporate dossier provides him many options. First, Thiel's Juiced Games appears to be based in The Cayman Islands.
Peter needs to live somewhere where life is secure and gays are not imprisoned or executed. Thiel's Palantir has divisions all over the world, even in his favored New Zealand.
It's a shame locals in New Zealand don't prostrate themselves before billionaires like Americans. Since they don't Thiel's preferred moving destination remains a question of speculation.
Thiel can't move to Russia alongside Alex Jones without his holdings losing access to Uncle Sam's wallet. In addition Peter would probably have his assets confiscated, like many Russian oligarchs.
Where will Peter Thiel land if he exits the U.S.? Somewhere he can control things.
This techbro God wants to rule. Whose kingdom is interested?
Update 9-11-24:The Globe and Mail reported Theil to sell up to $1 billion in Palantir stock:
According to regulatory filings made in August of this year, Thiel plans to sell as many as 28.5 million shares of Palantir by Dec. 31, 2025, or earlier.
The stock sales will be made through an investment vehicle owned by Thiel called Rivendell 7 LLC.
Over one-half of Palantir's revenue came from the governmental segment in 2023. Remember the billionaire boys hate paying taxes.
One story on billionaires building underground bunkers led to another on the harms they wish to avoid. And how do these obscenely wealthy men know about these existential dangers? They grew up with them in mythological form and then helped them become a current reality. I can't help but see aspects of a James Bond villain in their dark ascendance.
Take Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir, was an early investor in Facebook (now Meta). Thiel has three private equity underwriters (PEU), Founders Fund, Thiel Capital and Mithril Capital.
One might expect Thiel to understand product life cycles, given he is part of the techbro live forever crowd. Nvidia is making big money off AI but Palantir is in the top ten. The federal government uses Palantir's AI in healthcare, national security and the Department of Defense.
54% of Palantir's revenue is from government contracts.
A battle is underway to remove what few checks exist to restrain corporate power, especially invasive technology where pricing is a trade secret and even coordinate across an industry. Big's Matt Stoller suggests if the pendulum swings all the way back to corporations:
the consolidation wave, algorithmic price fixing and surveillance is going to ramp up at startling speed.
Note: The pendulum has only marginally swung in the direction of consumers with government serving as a slight check.
There is a modicum of hope. Local New Zealand citizens turned back Peter Thiel's giant bunker complex. Their general population should be an example for us all.
Update 8-17-24:The Daily Show's Jon Stewart noted creepy techbros in his interview with Mark Cuban. Stewart said "if this new sort of techbro phenomenon is so dystopian in its formulation." Cuban responded "watching what's happening in Silicon Valley is insane. It's not so much a support thing, it's more like a takeover thing, trying to put themselves into position to have as much control as possible. They want Trump to be the CEO of the United States of America and they want to be the board of directors that makes him listen to them. It's not a good thing."
Update 8-18-24: Peter Thiel went on Joe Rogan's podcast and pondered leaving the U.S. altogether. Is there a land suited for techbro diety?
It could be the Cayman Islands:
Dave Troy posted thoughts on techbros Thiel and Musk on X
Tax hating techbros learned from the PEU class before them. Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and increasingly more are one.
Ellie Rubenstein, the daughter of legendary private equity underwriter (PEU) David Rubenstein, resigned from the Alaska Permanent Fund board amid conflict of interest allegations. Ellie referenced the time consuming nature of APF board service in order to remake the organization in PEU image. Chris Ullman, former Communications Director at The Carlyle Group, served as Ellie's spokesman.
Ullman said, “Ellie has concluded that the scope and pace of change necessary to fully institutionalize the Permanent Fund are not compatible with the demands of leading her private equity firm.”
Fully institutionalize? Nice dig on the way out. Of course Ellie had the gratitude of new board officers and Alaska's Governor for her fine work. Never mind that Vice Chair Ellie Rubenstein was slated to assume the Board President role. From rising President to resignation. That's a big shift.
Ullman also hangs a Declaration Partners shingle, according to a recent press release. The insider money funnel has been good to Chris. Ullman has his own communications firm and is a senior advisor to Narrative Strategies.
Chris whistled the National Anthem at a Baltimore Orioles home game in early June. Ellie's father recently purchased the Orioles. Lead owner David Rubenstein co-founded The Carlyle Group before establishing his Declaration Partners family office.
Declaration now competes with Carlyle by soliciting investor funds and doing deals. Ellie resigned from the APF board so she could spend more time on her PEU, Manna Tree. Her father is an investor in Manna Tree. It sounds like a conflict of interest maelstrom.
There are no conflicts of interest in PEU land, just personal connections that provide insiders multiple paydays for doing part time work.
There's one less barbarian in the boardroom of the Alaska Permanent Fund as of August 1st. It's a win but not one worth whistling over.
Adam Taggart of Thoughtful Money once pondered offering a private equity product to his Wealthion viewers. I can't imagine that happening after watching his latest "Barbarians in the Boardroom" interview with noted author Gretchen Morgenson (embedded above).
Frankly, it is heartening to hear two people so eloquently state the damage done by private equity underwriters (PEU) in industry after industry. I saw the potential in 2006 after reading the White House Lessons Learned report on Hurricane Katrina. The hospital with the highest death toll post Katrina had been purchased by The Carlyle Group months prior. Those deaths got not one mention, zero. After finding more disturbing situations regarding private equity-government connections I created PEU Report in July 2007.
Over the last seventeen years the greed and leverage boys took over much of the U.S. economy. Founders dined with and advised U.S. Presidents.
Red and Blue political campaigns targeted PEU's preferred "carried interest" taxation for elimination. None have pulled it off, despite virtually no public support for retaining the tax break.
The Biden Cabinet is chock full of PEUs. His two Chiefs of Staff? Both
PEUs. Trump's top advisors rushed to start PEU firms post public service, Jared
Kushner-Affinity Partners and Steven Mnuchin-Liberty Strategic Capital.
Blue Team Presidential nominee Kamala Harris turned a blind eye to Mnuchin's OneWest Bank's robo-foreclosing on homeowners in the wake of the September 2008 financial crisis. Harris did so as California's Attorney General.
“OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and
waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and
effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”
The FDIC subsidized OneWest to the tune of $1 billion as it did what it pleased to struggling homeowners, irregardless of legality.
Billionaire techbros joined the PEU storming of D.C. Their convergence means even more massive donations washing around our nation's capital. Techbros/PEUs want low(er) taxes, less regulation/legal protection, access to Uncle Sam's giant wallet and an "all of government" blessing for cryptocurrencies, secondary PEU offerings, and fee secrecy (the price is not the price).
Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and their new tech-brethren. Increasingly more are one (even both like JD Vance).
The common people caught a glimpse of this recently on MSNBC with the interview of Carlyle Group Global Strategist Admiral James Stavridis. There was nary a Carlyle logo in sight, so I added one.
CNN's Jake Tapper interviewed billionaire tech bro Reid Hoffman regarding his planned fundraiser for Kamala Harris and his interest in having Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Kahn replaced. Tapper, to his credit, noted that sizeable political donations could buy influence.
Hoffman jumped on his verbal unicycle, balancing all of his roles,
political donor, expert, investor, owner, employer, founder and board member. He implied they
never overlap, as if he couldn't do something nefarious within any of
those roles. Reid is the poster child for "conflicts of interest" in the Microsoft-Inflection deal given he sits on both sides of the deal (Microsoft board member, Inflection AI co-founder and Greylock Partner-Inflection's owner).
Reid wants Kahn replaced because the
administration's antitrust efforts in the technology space are "bad for
investment." Billionaire Hoffman's Greylock Partners bio page states:
His foundational thesis of the power of networks extends beyond
marketplaces and social ecosystems. Recently, it has led to his
investments in sectors including autonomous transportation,
cryptocurrency, and shipping logistics.
And how
might Uncle Sam serve as a catalyst for any of Reid's newest endeavors? What's on tap for autonomous transportation, crypto and shipping logistics at the federal level?
Hoffman is Chairman of Endeavor Catalyst, an international investment
vehicle.
Unlimited Hangoutreported on the history of global tamperer Endeavor. The story included:
By ensuring that they dominate the leaders of both the public and
private sectors of the current and new generations, these oligarch
networks are able to control both sides of the “public-private
partnership.”
Both sides of the deal! Reid is well aware of that in his Microsoft-Inflection tie up (that awaits FTC review). Calling for a new FTC Chief in the middle of a review sounds like yet another conflict of interest. Multiple hats, multiple conflicts.
People pushing their book is nothing new. Expecting government to facilitate that book has been a several decade degradation. As Gretchen and Adam pointed out the system has been grossly distorted in their favor. I'd hate to see if furthered.
Update: Big's Matt Stoller wrote about "the price not being the price:"
....Federal Trade Commission investigating McKinsey, and more broadly, the
problem of surveillance pricing, which means corporations setting
different prices for different consumers based on big data algorithms.
The prospect of data-driven surveillance pricing horrifies most people and generated wide attention. Even CNBC’s Jim Cramer condemned it, and said that he couldn’t believe he agrees with Lina Khan on it.
It turns out McKinsey was using the same playbook on employee pay, advising companies in a possible form of wage fixing. I saw plenty of "apparently legal" wage theft while working for a PEU owned healthcare company. The price isn't the price and the pay isn't the pay in PEU land. It's all a construct for earning fees.
