Youngkin's Transition Team Has PEU Odor

The head of Virginia Governor Elect Glenn Youngkin's transition team is a private equity underwriter (PEU).  Jeff Goettman founded CameronBlue Capital, a private equity firm in 2006. Previously, Mr. Goettman was a Managing Member at Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C. based private equity firm.  Thayer Capital supports the political Red Team.

Glenn Youngkin's Carlyle Group sent U.S. auto part manufacturing jobs to China during its ownership of United Components, Inc.  A former Thayer Capital Partners affiliate, Qualitor, sees China as a ripe market for automotive aftermarket products.

I.m sure Jeff Goettman understands why Glenn Youngkin backed out on Carlyle's lead developer role for public-private partnership project Harbor Island.  The Carlyle Group's abandonment put the Port of Corpus Christi in a $400 million bind.

Devin O'Malley, the man who helped Youngkin avoid his actual record, got hired by Narrative Strategies.  O'Malley once worked for Trump's disastrous,, conflict dominated Coronavirus Task Force.  Bleach can't remove that stain.  This team's job is to divert the public's attention elsewhere.  Racy library books anyone?

Biden Thankful for House of Greed

U.S. President Joe Biden is spending Thanksgiving at the Nantucket home of Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein.  This will be at least the third time he has done so.  The first occurred in 2014, then 2016 and now 2021.  There is a chance Biden stayed there in 2019.

Multi-billionaire Rubenstein is the man who repeatedly saved private equity's preferred carried interest taxation and may benefit from the Blue Team tax cut for the wealthy.  On how many homes can David Rubenstein claim the state and local tax deduction?  

Carlyle's Rubenstein is reportedly in Europe and not with Biden for his Thanksgiving trip.  

Rubenstein has reportedly boasted to friends that he only spends 12 days a year at the Nantucket estate. 

Ultrarich Rubenstein would much rather pay interest than taxes.  Here's his latest take on taxes.

‘If you tax the upper income, there aren’t enough of those people to really make a wealth distribution effect that’s going to be significant. There just aren’t enough highly wealthy people.

It's remarkably consistent with his stand over a decade ago.  This is from a major business reporter (Summer 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. He was going on about the debt ceiling problem and how there would need to be cuts in services and higher taxes. When the reporter asked him about tax on carried interest he turned really disdainful and said that this "only" amounted to $22 billion over some number of years and this was not serious money. Boy, nothing like everybody doing their small part to save the country from oblivion!

History is why Biden's staying at the Carlyle Compound is disconcerting.   

Update 11-26-21:  The Carlyle Group's most recent lobbying report indicates its desire to keep PEU preferred carried interest taxation, garner a chunk of all of the Blue Team's spending bills and further Carlyle's COVID-19 profit plans.  Billionaire PEU founders can pick up the phone and call the occupant of the White House.  Both Red and Blue Presidents answer the phone for non-lobbyist David Rubenstein.

Update 1-14-22:  After bailing as lead developer for the Port of Corpus Christi's Harbor Island Carlyle plans to start a new infrastructure offering.  Time to mine more of Uncle Sam's wallet?

Update 11-22-22:  Biden is back at the PEU Rubenstein compound on Nantucket for yet another Thanksgiving.

Youngkin Cannot Disparge Carlyle Group until September 2025

Virginia's Governor Elect for the Red Team Glenn Youngkin will be sworn into office on January 15, 2022.  The former Co-CEO for The Carlyle Group, a politically connected private equity underwriter (PEU), left Carlyle in September 2020.  His employment agreement with Carlyle has a Non-Disparagement Clause that runs for five years after separation.  It states:

Employer and Employee covenant and agree that, both during Employee’s employment with Employer and for a period of five years after the Termination Date, (i) Employee shall not disparage Carlyle, the Founders and Carlyle’s employees, directors or businesses or members of Carlyle’s Executive and Management Committees and (ii) Carlyle shall not authorize, and the Founders and Carlyle’s directors and members of Carlyle’s Executive and Management Committees shall not make, disparaging remarks about Employee. The previous sentence shall not apply, however, in the case of any statement that is made (x) in testimony pursuant to a court order, subpoena or legal process or (y) to a court, mediator, government agency or arbitrator in connection with any litigation or dispute between Employer and Employee.

As Carlyle Co-CEO Youngkin headed the firm's infrastructure efforts.  The Carlyle Group abandoned its lead developer role for deep-water oil terminal expansion for the Port of Corpus Christi, known as Harbor Island.  Glenn Youngkin's abdication left a roughly $400 million hole in that public-private partnership.  

Texas officials long looked the other way regarding Carlyle.  In 2004 Texas Governor Rick Perry provided $35 million to Carlyle affiliate Vought Aircraft Aviation for 3,000 jobs.  Come 2010 Carlyle cut 35 positions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, garnering $1 million per job eliminated.

Youngkin and Carlyle's executive team chose not to pay back Texas taxpayers when they flipped Vought. for $1.44 billion

The Carlyle Group bid on Virginia Ports operations in 2012.   It later withdrew their proposal. 

The firm told officials it's no longer interested in pursuing a long-term lease of the Virginia Port Authority's terminals.

That ended prior to Carlyle inking a lead developer role.  Youngkin has been on the abandonment side of at least one public-private partnership and faced no public scrutiny. 

Virginia voters have a right to expect Glenn Youngkin not to have any restrictive clauses impeding his job as Virginia's Governor.   That his loyalty to Carlyle could stand above his oath to Virginians is cause for concern.

Update 11-26-21:  The head of Youngkin's transition team is a PEU.  Jeff Goettman founded CameronBlue Capital, a private equity firm in 2006. Previously, Mr. Goettman was a Managing Member at Thayer Capital Partners, a Washington, D.C. based private equity firm.  

The man who helped Youngkin avoid his actual record got hired by Narrative Strategies.  He once worked for Trump's disastrous Coronavirus Task Force.

Also, a Youngkin spokesperson confirmed transition officials have been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.  Is there also a non-disparagement clause?

Powell's Renomination Good for PEU Boys

Fortune reported how Fed Chair Jerome Powell's policies boosted his former private equity employers.  The article stated:

Powell spent years as a private equity dealmaker, creating and selling the kinds of debt instruments that he later bailed out as Fed chairman. Powell’s radical actions to pump more money into markets, credited by many with keeping the economy afloat throughout the pandemic, have also greatly benefited his former peers in the private equity business. To be clear, there is no indication that Powell has taken any actions at the Fed to directly enrich himself or his former employers. But Powell’s career illuminates the deeper realities about the Federal Reserve and the American economy. The Fed’s policies are not just the realm of technocrat PhD economists who are solving math equations. The Fed is enacting programs that create winners and losers. And the winners, time and again, are people like Jay Powell and the investment firms that made him rich.

It's hard to throw a rock in political circles and not hit a private equity underwriter (PEU).  The greed and leverage boys have infected America's citadels of power and steer policy/budgets that profits their own.

In the early 2000s, Powell was a partner at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that specialized in hiring former government officials and cashing in on their connections. At Carlyle, Powell learned firsthand about the debt-driven business model of the private equity business, which delivered hundreds of millions of dollars of profit to senior partners while saddling the companies they bought and sold with debt and downsizing. As it happened, this is exactly the kind of economic activity that the Fed has been relentlessly encouraging over the past decade. Many years of easy money policies have been rocket fuel for private equity firms like Carlyle Group because cheap debt is their lifeblood. It funds their ambitious takeover plans and even funds their paychecks directly.

The article highlighted Jay Powell's role in flipping Carlyle affiliate Rexnord for a king's ransom.

Under Carlyle’s investment rules, 80% of the profits would have gone to the limited partner investors who put up money for the buyouts and 20% to Carlyle, according to one person familiar with Carlyle’s operations. Of the Carlyle money, 45% went to the corporate “mothership,” as they called it, and 55% would go to Jay Powell’s team. Government disclosure forms from 2018 indicate that Powell’s personal wealth was worth between $20 million and $55 million by 2018.

Powell left Carlyle after his huge payday.  Rexnard would be crippled by the massive debt loaded onto its balance sheet.  Powell started Severn Capital Partners and worked for PEU Global Environment Fund.

Dallas Fed Chair Richard Fisher called out Powell's subsidies to his PEU peers.

Quantitative easing “has, I believe, had a wealth effect, but principally for the rich and the quick—the Buffetts, the KKRs, the Carlyles, the Goldman Sachses, the Powells, maybe the Fishers—those who can borrow money for nothing and drive bonds and stocks and property higher in price, and profit goes to their pocket,” Fisher said during one meeting. He argued that this would not create jobs, or boost wages, to nearly the degree the Fed hoped it would.

Virginians just elected a governor who exported jobs to China.  Rexnord did likewise under PEU ownership"

All this corporate debt didn’t benefit Rexnord employees like John Feltner who worked at the company’s ball-bearing plant in Indianapolis. As it labored under so much debt, Rexnord looked for ways to cut costs. In 2016, Rexnord announced that it was shuttering the plant where Feltner worked and sending the production to a new facility in Mexico, cutting 350 jobs in the United States.

The Fed instituted numerous new programs during the 2020 pandemic shutdown, saving countless private equity affiliates.

This bailout didn’t just save the corporate debt market. It fueled it. By the end of 2020, companies issued more than $1.9 trillion in new corporate debt, beating the previous record that was set in 2017. The cheap debt has helped deliver record profits to private equity firms like Carlyle Group. In late October, Carlyle reported a record $14 billion in asset sales for the third quarter of the year, helping it pay $730.6 million in earnings to its shareholders, also a record. Carlyle’s stock price has jumped about 86% since the beginning of the year.

The greed and leverage boys know Powell has their back.  

It remains to be seen how stable corporate debt markets once the Fed eases the pressure to search for yield. But private equity firms, hedge funds and Wall Street speculators can take one lesson from the past few years: Jay Powell will be there for them.  

PEU Powell is worthy of a Biden cabinet position or renomination as Fed Chair.

Update 6-10-22:  Insider Larry Summers said “The Fed’s forecasts from March, saying that inflation would be coming down to the 2s by the end of the year was, frankly, delusional when issued, and looks even more ridiculous today.”  Inflation was a hot 8.6% for May.  Summers urged the Fed to investigate why officials’ forecasts were “so dramatically” and repeatedly wrong.

Red Team Senator Scott Cheers Inflation

Red Team leaders have a strange way of supporting Americans struggling financially.

We're going to continue to have inflation, and then interest rates will go up," Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the head of the Senate GOP's fundraising arm.  "This is a gold mine for us," he said.

Scott already owns a personal gold mine with nearly $260 million in net assets and can easily withstand inflation.  The common citizen does not have his resources and should be concerned about the Senator's celebration of economic distress.

Here's Rick Scott's historical contribution to healthcare inflation:

When family practice physician Randy Prokes joined Solantic Urgent Care in 2004, he told state investigators, his Neptune Beach clinic brought in just $2,000 a day.

By the time he was fired from that job nearly six years later, Prokes said, that same clinic had quadrupled revenues to about $8,000 a day, reaping profit margins unheard of at most doctors' offices.

Rick Scott founded Solantic in 2001 and sold the chain of medical clinics to PEU Welsh, Carson, Anderson and Stowe in 2011.   The 300% increase in revenue occurred under Scott's ownership and contributed to healthcare inflation, long a sore spot for the common person.

Update 12-3-21: "Mitch McConnell has told colleagues and donors Senate Republicans won't release a legislative agenda before next year's midterms."  The Red team will complain about inflation without coming up with a plan to address it should they get a Congressional majority.

Youngkin Shafted Texas Taxpayers

Virginia's Governor elect Glenn Youngkin has a bad track record in Texas.  He headed The Carlyle Group's infrastructure efforts.  Carlyle backed out of its lead developer role for the Port of Corpus Christi;s Harbor Island expansion.  That 2019 move left a potential $400 million hole for the public-private partnership. 

It wasn't the first time The Carlyle Group failed to meet its Texas commitments.  Carlyle's 2009 Annual Report stated:

"in March 2010, Carlyle agreed to sell Vought to aircraft components maker Triumph Group in a transaction worth $1.44 billion.  

Carlyle's executive leadership decided not to refund Texas taxpayers a mere $35 million out of that nearly $1.5 billion proceeds for failures to meet Vought's promised jobs target.  The executives included:

 The three founders are joined by Daniel F. Akerson and Glenn A. Youngkin on the firm’s executive committee.  

The operating committee is led by seven seasoned Carlyle professionals: Glenn A. Youngkin, Chair; Jeffrey W. Ferguson; David M.Marchick; Peter H. Nachtwey; Michael J. Petrick; Bruce E. Rosenblum; and Gregory L. Summe."  

The name on both groups is the newly elected Governor of Virginia representing the Red Team, Glenn Youngkin..

Youngkin helped short Texas taxpayers as Carlyle kept $35 million over six years.  Not only did it not come close to their employment promises, they cut 35 jobs during that period.  Glenn and Carlyle received $1 million from taxpayers for each Texas Vought job they cut during the performance period.

The average citizen doesn't get to keep $35 million over six years for completely failing to meet an incentive.   Carlyle knew it would not add promised Texas jobs in 2006.  That was four years before it faced the prospect of making minimal repayment.  

Why does this matter?  Youngkin will be in a position to push public-private partnerships and jobs incentives as Virginia Governor.  He has a bad track record in both areas.

Update 7-16-22:  American University and just hired former Carlyle Group Managing Director David Marchick as Dean of AU's business school. Do they have a course on milking state economic development funds?

PEU Declares "Death Knell" of Corporate Conglomerates

Seeking Alpha reported financial sharks surround GE as it breaks into multiple companies.   Private equity underwriters (PEU) are interested in GE's financial assets, airplane leasing, power generation and long term healthcare insurance.

"This is epochal," a P-E partner tells FT, calling GE's break-up the "death knell" of the conglomerate business strategy.

The greed and leverage boys love disintegration.  They created the conditions that contributed to political division, now fully dysfunctional.  Decades of exporting U.S. jobs, reducing headcount, giving zero to minimal raises gave many citizens a tough hand.  

Red and Blue political parties strive to steer the decades-long, crap economic sandwich into support for their candidates, many of them PEUs.  Yes, the very people that sent local jobs overseas, reduced staffing/benefits and touted business policies the very opposite of their political party are the answer to a disaffected public.  The media noted none of that for former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin in his race for Virginia Governor (Red Team).  NBC News highlighted:

..given Youngkin's polished brand, financial background and unwillingness to fully embrace the former president.

The Blue Team couldn't point out Carlyle's failings under Youngkin's ownership as their candidate invested in Carlyle's private equity offerings.  Virginians had to choose from a PEU executive or a PEU limited partner.  

Serving policy making billionaires is U.S. political constant, a north star for both parties.  Politicians Red and Blue love PEU and many are one.   With their outsized riches inflation does not impact them in the least.  However it is the latest level of pain citizens have experienced from those in charge.

Disintegration and greed for money and power are all our political/business leaders have to give us.  For that we suffer.

"Voters need to see us as normal. Just normal people."

Then give us some.   Maybe that will come when society and businesses start integrating again.