CNN: Carlyle Vice Chairman Back, Much Left Unsaid

It's becoming a weekly event for Carlyle Group Vice Chairman Admiral James Stavridis to be interviewed by Michael Smerconish with no disclosure as to the man's day job.  

Stavridis could have provided color on Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein's decision to sell 500,000 shares of stock for over $23 million.  Surely, the man's tax bill went down like other billionaires in his class.  

Is Rubenstein funding another historical project as part of his "patriotic philanthropy," the political sales pitch for his longtime "carried interest" tax dodge?  

Does he plan to invest the money in his daughter Alexa's new PEU fund based in West Palm Beach, Florida - the New Cracker Wall Street?

Later on Smerconish interviewed the parents of Sam Bankman-Fried about his "innocence."  For a lawyer Smerconish went light on the legal details that contributed to SBF's conviction.  

SBF and David Rubenstein both invested in Paxos, alongside numerous other TechGods and private equity underwriters (PEU).  SBF approach Rubenstein for an investment as FTX neared financial trouble.  Rubenstein passed.

Co-mingling customer funds with company trading accounts is a longtime financial sin that has taken down many executives.  

Back to Admiral Stavridis and his day job, global strategy at Carlyle.  I am sure he is working overtime to assess the impact on Carlyle's portfolio and where/how to put their giant vaults of dry powder to work.  Trump II's country by country takeover has a strong economic motivation as "deal makers earn deal fees" and he needs greater net worth.

Consider this from another PEU, Skybridge Capital's Anthony Scaramucci:

...the U.S. and its allies had developed a “systemic blind spot” after the Berlin Wall fell, treating liberal democracy's victory as inevitable and making economic mistakes that fueled political and cultural fractures. 

He admitted that, as a young Wall Street analyst, he had ignored the concerns of American workers while leaders justified offshoring, trade integration, and China's WTO entry.

It was the PEU boys who bought U.S. companies and shuttered factories, sending jobs overseas.  Politicians provided them tax breaks that helped millionaires become billionaires.  

The factories are "coming back" but they will be automated.  Carlyle's Stavridis may be working on this, but we know Jeff Bezos is as well.  Axios reported:

(Bezos) is in talks to raise $100 billion for a fund that would buy manufacturing companies "and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation."

TechGods and at least one Trump boy have a stake in factory automation company Hadrian.  Don Jr. is a partner for 1789 Capital which took a stake in Hadrian two months ago.

Stavridis could have talked about:

1.  the Trump's race to expand the American economic pie by raiding other countries or 
2. the PEU race within the race to garner larger and larger chunks of Uncle Sam's budget in the new Red Team's "state capitalism" or 
3. the race to paper over criminal behavior in our new anything goes business environment.  

That I would have found more interesting.