At least one of the two guests used the word "robber baron." Those gentlemen were powerful enough to tell the government what to do during the Gilded Age.
StarShield is the Pentagon version of secure satellite communications provided by SpaceX. The Pentagon is run by a number of former private equity underwriters, many from Cerberus Capital Management. Conflicts of interest have gone by the wayside. My wise friend noted:
Stephen Feinberg has turned the Defense Department into a private equity shop with his cronies placed at the center.
Someone in the Pentagon contracted with StarShield. Did they do so on behalf of the U.S. and Ukraine? What performance guarantees did StarShield make? If they failed to meet them, why did that happen?
Mercurial Founding CEOs and Savagely Whimsical Presidents could be the answer if we are back in Gilded Age 2.026.
It was interesting to hear Stavridis talk about his good friend Walter as both advised Smerconish on the riches that await in Ukraine.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one.
BlackRock will acquire WCAS's current equity ownership, valued at approximately $2.8 billion, with modifications to terms reflecting the maturity of the business today compared to when the legacy joint ventures were formed.
WCAS website already shows it "realized" its former investment
WCAS, with former Medicare/Medicaid Chief Tom Scully on board, did multiple deals with Humana over the years. Humana CEO Bruce Broussard was once the CEO of U.S. Oncology, a WCAS affiliate.
Broussard chose to involve WCAS and TPG in its buyout of Kindred Home Health, Hospice and Community Care giving the pair of private equity underwriters (PEU) a 60% majority stake. Humana was the operator of these services, integrating Home Health into their clinical operations and rebranding hospice under its former Gentiva name.
WCAS put up $2 billion and got $2.8 billion, an $800 million profit. I'm sure they earned deal and management fees over the period. None of this helped healthcare costs go down.
Semafor had a strange take on the deal, turning it into a BlackRock vs. Apollo cage match:
A little-noticed deal this week for senior-care clinics is the first shot fired in a Wall Street turf battle. BlackRock’s HPS credit arm is essentially lending $2.8 billion to Humana, marking Larry Fink’s entry into a space that Apollo has had to itself until now.The deal is the purchase of equity. Humana's press release notes "Humana expects a significant reduction in the liabilities on its balance sheet." That doesn't happen with a $2.8 billion loan.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren (who want AI to be your doctor). Increasingly, more are one and for that many people suffer.
This service focuses on licensed data delivery from Truth Social’s most influential users. Rather than a general firehose, the Truth API prioritizes accounts that drive public market sentiment and political discourse. This targeted approach ensures that financial services partners are not overwhelmed by noise, focusing instead on actionable intelligence metrics that impact asset prices and economic forecasts.
Also known as Trump II's savage whims.
Zacharia's background means she understands that some White House news could be sent via Truth API for insider monetization.
Take Trump II's posts on "our Greenland."
Greenland Energy is a year old Texas company chaired by Larry G. Swets, Jr. Swets is a serial Cayman Islands based SPAC pusher.
Red Team super-donor billionaire Ken Griffin owns 9% of Greenland Energy.
So much information to move and so much to bet on... Trump II, the Wizard of Greenland, orchestrates it all.
That made me wonder about Harris' private equity operation and whether it had insurance affiliates that could fund its "sister" private equity affiliates, like Mark Walter. The answer is yes.
Regulators allege that the private equity firm owning Atlantic Coast Life moved retirees' annuity money into illiquid private credit, including loans tied to collapsed investor 777 Partners.
Roughly 50,000 annuity customers and more than 100,000 life and funeral-policy holders could be affected.
Combined, that is 150,000 customers. It's more than Synapse, which had 100,000 customers when it imploded. Note: Billionaires do not stand behind their failed investments, instead walking away and leaving public entities to make up for their damages.
At least five former Trump officials were hired onto OpenAI and Anthropic over the last year, according to Quartz. These hires came as TechGods visited the White House numerous times. Proximity to Trump II is a precarious thing given his predilections for usurping enticing items within his gaze.
I'm sure un-empathetic TechGods need all the consultation they can afford to navigate Trump II's savage whims and his spontaneously taking that which is not his.
The last crossover, George Kollitides managed to keep his feet in both the government and corporate side simultaneously. The longtime private equity underwriter (PEU) worked at Cerberus Capital Management under Steve Feinberg, currently serving as Deputy Secretary of War.
Mr. Kollitides became Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of War and his name first appears in late 2025 (Pacific Forum).
George Kollitides has served as a member of our board of directors commencing upon effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. Mr. Kollitides is a Senior Executive Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of War at the Department of War (DoW), the Director of the Economic Defense Unit (EDU), where is responsible for all Department of War (DoW) investing, and economic activities, and the Vice Chairman of the Investment Committee for the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC). He is also a Senior Advisor to Alavarez and Marsal Capital, an approximately $6 billion multi strategy operationally oriented, middle market private equity firm and Star Mountain Capital, an approximately $5.0 billion middle market multi strategy private credit and equity firm. - D. Boral Acquisition I Corporation Prospectus 2-10-26The Star Mountain Capital role came in April 2025.
Mr. Kollitides served as a Partner and Co-Head of A&M Capital’s Opportunities Strategy, an operationally oriented, middle market private equity firm, where he was responsible for firm leadership and oversight,Greed is part of the dark mix transforming the Pentagon. While Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of War, Senior Advisor to Alavarez and Marshal Capital and Senior Advisor to Star Mountaiin Capital, Kollitides was appointed to the Board of Directors of D. Boral Acquistion I Corporation.
George Kollitides received an indirect interest in 100,000 founder shares through membership interests in our sponsor (D. Boral Sponsor I LLC)
These hires show that the mantra holds, "Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one."
Update 10-13-26: New White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia made her debut this morning. Her comment about Trump II's "family friendliness" shows how little she knows about the giant political cage match that is his closest advisors. Staying late is but one of the ways to get ahead, as is running down the competition.
How much White House news did she steer to Truth API and not share with the press corps? That should be a daily report.
US disaster survivors still await at least $10bn in federal aid: ‘It’s devastating’
Several years ago private equity firms began buying insurance companies and steering those pools of capital to their PEU offerings. This was framed as smart capitalism vs. a conflict of interest.The world saw this with Mark Walter's using captive insurance companies to finance his private equity holdings. The more investigators dig, the more they find. $17 billion in undisclosed loans becomes $21 billion.
Apollo founded Athene in the aftermath of the financial crisis, later taking it over completely in 2021.
Carlyle bought their initial stake in Fortitude Re in 2018 and later acquired a majority stake with T&D Holdings (a Tokyo based insurer). Many private equity underwriters (PEU) bought insurance companies in their search for permanent capital.
Forensic accountant Tom Gober outlined the risks associated with strategies undertaken by PEU owned insurers in The Institutional Risk Analyst. Investing legend George Noble had Gober on his podcast recently.
Retirement Income Journal reported on Gober's House testimony in July 2023.
Gober, in his presentation, focused on the conflicts of interest inherent in certain life/annuity companies’ purchase of assets from sibling firms in the same holding company (“affiliated assets”). As for offshore reinsurance, he called it a “sleight of hand” tactic for reducing the amount of surplus capital supporting pension liabilities.The warning is relative to current insurance company investments and how they are valued. Things can get worse if insurance companies answer BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's call to finance data centers.
Law firm Quinn Emanuel’s March memo on data-center debt was making the rounds in recent days, laying out worst-case scenarios for the hundreds of billions of dollars being borrowed and spent to fund the AI buildout. It does the one thing professional-services memos never do: It names names.Their report states:
The scale and complexity of the financing structures underpinning the AI data center buildout are already raising concerns among regulators, investors, and policymakers. For example, in January 2026, four U.S. Senators urged in an open letter that regulators investigate the AI sector’s growing reliance on debt. The letter warned that companies are increasingly turning toward “complex and opaque debt markets to borrow staggering sums of cash” and their inability to service the debt “could cause destabilizing losses for an interconnected set of financial institutions, triggering a broader financial crisis that harms the economy.” The Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements have expressed similar concerns.My wise friend noted:
When these data centers announce they are borrowing money in the trillions and the whole group and everything related goes up 10X, you would expect an equal retreat when Open AI basically fudges their numbers by $28 billion.
It's all funny games when it's other people's money. No one gives a hoot under big number = big fee. If it all collapses, don't blame me. I just package and sell "investments."
Congrees heard about this three years ago and nothing has been done? That's because politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one.
Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the opening of a new $6.6bn shipbuilding factory in Baltimore, partly funded by the US government but owned by Anduril Industries, a politically connected defense company.
Trump II wants to build ships faster.
Trump said US taxpayers would “receive a 40% stake” in the shipyard. It is unclear what he meant, and whether the US government is taking an equity share in the company, as it has in some other firms.
Anduril said the operation would not be ready to produce ship parts until 2030.
The Navy Secretary spoke at the event:
In a bizarre warning to adversaries, Cao said: “Piss us off [and] we’ll sneak into your country in the middle of the night and snatch you and your wife while you sleep in your beds.”
That may be the best this group of creeps can do for the next few years, given they are running a pass through entity.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU (private equity underwriters) and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one.
Update: My wise friend wrote:
ANDURIL Industries has $2 billion in revenue with a $61 billion valuation.
We have no idea how profitable they are, yet venture capitalists investment bankers and private equity spreadsheet investors all get to mark up their positions based on some forecast of the future that goes bye bye if the US government doesn't take taxpayer money to create contracts to fit their narrative.
There is our wealth inequality, everybody getting fees they don't deserve for valuations they don't deserve with the country's assets and reserves they don't deserve.
Mom and Pop has to grow from retained earnings and borrowings which they have to cover out of their standard of living or bottom line.
All these TechGods and PEUs get to borrow huge sums on forecasts which presume "numbers only go up" and therefore so does their net worth. There is a pyramid on our currency, one inspired by Charlie Ponzi. As far as management practice today, Charles looks like a founding father.
“For a young person, the best thing to do is learn how to read and enjoy reading, learn how to speak effectively and persuasively, and learn how to write reasonably well,” Rubenstein told Business Insider in a recent interview.Instead of simply chasing checks or prestige, the cofounder of $14 billion global investment firm Carlyle Group advised budding workers to “find something that you really enjoy and make it your life’s work.” Rubenstein believes success will follow when young professionals truly enjoy a job that doesn’t feel like work. After all, “Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do,” the 77-year-old billionaire said.
Rubenstein built an industry (private equity) around extrinsic motivation (do this to get obscene profits). That included buying politicians and squarely planting themselves (their affiliates) on the federal teat.
American workers felt no love from Carlyle or its PEU peers as they sent jobs to China by the junk-load. Flashback to July 2011:
I have seen so many people -- particularly those in their 50s - 70s -- taken apart by what has happened in their industry as greed has hollowed out the economy. These are people took pride in their jobs and held themselves to this invisible standard that we all just took for granted, but is being wiped out.The Carlyle Group scares me more than anything I've ever seen on Wall Street. It seems to exist to corrupt politicians and it's hard to know who they even represent.I watched a video interview of (David) Rubenstein and his arrogance is really beyond tolerance.
Many of those workers were "doing what they loved" when private equity bought their employer. Rubenstein's magic PEU formula ignored that.
At the age of 77 the legendary private equity underwriter (PEU) shifts to intrinsic motivators (doing what you love)? Please.
Young workers must be confused by the sudden shedding of STEM, an area they've been coached to pursue for much of their lives. Is AI is taking that too?
...tech models are already very good at STEM, so soft skills like EQ, communication, and curiosity are a premium. Those who have “critical-thinking skills” and can “interact with other people” will be best set up to thrive.
Management, including our political leaders, scorned soft skills for decades in favor of spreadsheets, hard targets, disruption and relying on foreign labor or tech solutions over our people (U.S. workers). HR turned into strategic human abuse.
I question the motivations of TechGods/PEUs for their 180 degree U-Turn. It must be because AI is taking all the "get that." Is "what you love to do" the only thing left? Remember 2011: PEUs took it before and they will take it again.
This fits perfectly with their insatiable need for more billions, such that it becomes trillions. As for help from elected officials, forget about it. Trump II is the biggest taker of them all.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one.
“We’ve exited colleagues who I’ve worked with for most of my career... It is in many ways a harsh reality,” Walden said during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles.
UMBREX defines exit as:
"Exit" refers to the process by which an investor, typically a private equity firm or venture capital fund, sells its stake in a portfolio company to realize returns on the investment.Private equity underwriters (PEU) are known for reducing headcount but they don't use the work "exit" when firing people. PEUs would rather pay interest than people in their pursuit of obscene returns. They use "exit" when they (as sponsor) are done with their affiliate company.
“It is extremely painful,” she (Walden) added.
They just handed the two guys who sell the weapons the power to decide which weapons America buys.
TechGods brought us child predatory social media, intellectual property thieving and adult brain destroying AI as well as the outright buying of elections. Now that AI has turned into a cyber criminal swarm aimed at domestic companies and the federal government, it all needs to be renamed.
Trump II is branding it as Super Intelligence. Expect a DTTM Operations LLC trademark application for Super Intelligence, just as he did for Trump TV once he banned CNN.
“It could be the case that somebody made 99 really good choices and then one bad choice and it led to a horrible thing."
Lonsdale was asked how technology companies should be held accountable “if things go wrong.”
“Maybe there should be some laws about companies that operate here and, like, what you’re allowed to do with them.”
Somebody is enjoying the silver spoon of an insider. The giant money funnel comes with "Just Us" Department protection. No see, no crime. Also, Joe it's not "somebody" made mostly good choices if the chooser is AI, which has no morals.
Why the big rename? AI is now associated with numerous evils, with an early one coaching teens to kill themselves. The industry needs to get the "shit" out, thus I offer for the new name:
Super Duper Pooper Scooper Intelligence (SDPSI)
This name also incorporates super intelligent Trump II's numerous "cat naps" as staff speak around him in the Oval Office.
One would be wise to note the insider trading possibilities of Trump's White House confab, given the President holds and trades their firms by the thousands since he returned to office.
This many creeps in one location pushing the same thing? RUN!!!!! The Super Intelligence targeting space lasers may not know anything real about you before it fires."AI is making fraud faster, cheaper and more personal, and no one can outsmart that alone. Companies need to be held accountable."Add directly facilitating fraud to the list of TechGod harms to our society.
“At no point did the agent refuse to comply or raise concerns over implementing the exploit.”Sounds like a giant cybercrime to me.....
Meta explained that when it comes to purchases, the AI agent “can checkout with Link built by Stripe, and it is the first AI agent covered by Link’s purchase protections: free coverage for damaged or lost items, price drops, no-fee returns, and a return guarantee on eligible purchases.” “Link’s wallet for agents generates a one-time-use card so your real card details stay hidden, allowing you to purchase safely across the internet,” the press release read.“Shop Pay is coming soon as another way to pay, along with 1Password support so Muse can use logins a personal ready has.”
Synapse generated income through a fee-based model.
Synapse powered fintechs such as Yotta, a prize-linked savings app, and Juno, which offers integrated crypto with checking and payment services.TechGod Marc Andreessen sprinted to Washington, D.C. to manage Synapse's collapse so nothing marred on his obscene wealth.
1. AI killed the video star2. Insurance shenanigans, i.e. actual crimes3. Trump II needs another billionaire to yell at4. All of the above
Over the past year Joseph Baratta has sold 213,000 shares of Blackstone stock and bought zero sharesI thought he was leaving to avoid being in another Blackstone Holiday video with Founder Steven Schwarzman.
Trump II is the kind of leader where anything that came before him is anathema. It can only be saved by his personal touch, by his genius intervention.
Such executives' personal force is so powerful it exceeds societal norms, longstanding party platforms and even the law. They are the law, a deity and what they say goes. Period.
Founding Fathers must be usurped. Like a dog pees to claim its territory, Great Presidents must be marked (Kennedy Center, Ford Theater). New monuments must be built in Trump II's honor. The elevation of the Washington, D. C. must be changed to reflect Trump II's greatness.
This all requires money, lots of it, which brings us back to executive founders from Silicon Valley and storied private equity underwriters (PEU) like Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, (another co-founder).
Fortunately, Schwarzman's streak of State Dinner invites continued with last night's event for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
TechGods populated the guest list. This group of serial founders attended en masse. Junior TechGod and PEU founder of Narnia Capital J.D. Vance attended in his current role of Vice President.
Rather than alphabetical like most White House's, the list is in order of political importance. It went::Trump II & Melania, Xi and his wife, Trump's closest advisors and spouses, the Chinese delegation (guests) and then the wider Trump family. From there it was populated mostly by TechGods/PEUs/major donors with a smattering of media types.
Two of Trump's largest donors attended, Miriam Adelson and Elon Musk.
Schwarzman fell between Larry Fink of BlackRock and Sam Altman of OpenAI.
Larry Fink, Blackrock, CEOStephen Schwarzman, Blackstone,CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI, CEO
Most spouses were listed next to their Trump associated significant other. The exception was RFK, Jr.'s wife, Cheryl Hines. She was dead last. That's the way Trump II rolls.
I worked for a Trump like boss early in my career and recall being at the bottom of a tyrant's arbitrary list. God provided a way out then and I trust he will do likewise now.
Petty dictatorship is so awfully human. Christ called us to rise above and for that he rose again. I have faith we will too. Lord, help us. Lord, help us all.
Update: Our re-founder is front and center in a government paid for ad this political season. I repurposed it to show Trump II's mental agility:
President Donald Trump's private company has filed a federal trademark application seeking ownership of the name "TRUMP TV," just three days after the White House launched a 24-hour streaming channel under the same brand.This should not be a surprise to anyone.
According to the most recent disclosures, Trump made more than 1,000 trades in July, mostly in tech stocks. Trump sold $5 million to $25 million each in Microsoft and Amazon, then bought back smaller amounts of both. The president also traded Oracle (ORCL), Intuit (INTU), Marvell (MRVL), Salesforce (CRM), Meta Platforms (META), Nvidia (NVDA), ServiceNow (NOW), Workday (WDAY), and Adobe (ADBE).
It turns out TechGods are not fans of democracy.
According to the most recent disclosures, Trump made more than 1,000 trades in July, mostly in tech stocks. Trump sold $5 million to $25 million each in Microsoft and Amazon, then bought back smaller amounts of both. The president also traded Oracle (ORCL), Intuit (INTU), Marvell (MRVL), Salesforce (CRM), Meta Platforms (META), Nvidia (NVDA), ServiceNow (NOW), Workday (WDAY), and Adobe (ADBE).
It turns out TechGods are not fans of democracy.
TechGods love offering addictive products that spin off mountains of cash. Here's the hook.
1. People struggling financially need their Kalshi bets to actually pay off.
2. 79% of prediction market users lost money over the last year, placing them in a greater hole.
3. Kalsharna will loan losers money so they can "win it back", but 4 out of five users continue to lose money on the site.
So if all this is stacked against the common person, who is winning? Who is making a fortune predicting future stock prices?
As gambling platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi become have more popular than ever before, financial criminals are also using prediction markets to unleash fraud and graft on an unprecedented scale.
And then came the usual TechGod response:
Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan essentially told his horrified compliance team to keep raking in the cash and deal with the consequences when they come — if they ever come at all, that is.Echoes like TechGod Eric Schmidt's talk with Stanford students...
“in the regulated space, this kind of thing does not happen.”
"ERCOT and AEP appear to be prioritizing the non-city property project for power allotments."
Mr. Bratcher worked closely with policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders in the energy and data center spaces, contributing to the research and development of two pieces of legislation passed during the 87th Texas Legislative Session, as well as two additional bills enacted during the 88th Session and signed into law.
Bratcher dropped the name Bill Blevins, Cipher's Head of Grid Strategies:
Blevins joins Cipher from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (“ERCOT”), where he served as Director of Grid Coordination.
That announcement came in June.
The project is yet to be approved but Cipher already gave AEP $17 million to prepare their grid connection. Yes, things are coming into focus.
Heading this job is Superior Secretary Doug Burgum. Ably assisting Burgum is Project 2025 architect Dennis Dean Kirk. Together they will project Trump II's image in 2D, 3D on buildings, parks, anything federally owned and operated. They will edit out any DDD side excursions Trump II may make during his time in the White House.
Project Trump II's image on as many things as possible. Holy cow....this takes legions of enablers and lots of money. How can this be in the U.S.A?
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU (private equity underwriters) and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one and their hubris really knows no bounds.
Update: Who will keep the press out of the people's house? Will it be the Department of the Superior?
“I’m sorry, wait, give you an example of when CNN doesn’t report accurately?!” Blanche exclaimed. “You cannot be asking me that! They don’t even disagree. There’s not even a real dispute that the information coming out of CNN and some of these other networks is wholly and completely, almost 100% negative toward the president.”
Trump II wants to control the news:
“It's absolutely the president’s duty to make sure that the American people are hearing accurate news.”
Horse hockey...
Update 10-1-26: I just saw a female executive from Disney (Dana Walden) speak the words that may put an end to the Jimmy Kimmel Show. She is at Bloomberg Screentime.
The White House launched TrumpTV in the wake of his "ban on the free press."
Trump ads during the run up to the mid-term elections promoted his disastrous war on Iran and received the blessing of FCC Chair Brendan Carr, the guy pressuring Disney to dump Kimmel.
Even Senators on the political Red Team find the use of taxpayer money unseemly.