Frank Bisignano is from that world. You can surmise where it's going from there. It will be destroyed.

26 people in my division were summarily downsized - myself included. Seems the vulture capitalists bought a viable company, then rolled in a consortium of six companies totally unrelated to the core business. These companies were heavily debt-laden and dragged down my company like a stone.

It's a short term gain, damn the long term consequences that is pushing money upwards away from the larger population.

Is less employee friendly than Private Equity.

KKR and its peers have booted it many, many times over the years, but they also do a lot of good for America and its workers.

1) Generally, if PE is getting involved, the company is not operating at peak performance. Prior to PE, it was difficult for small or struggling companies to get capital which they desperately needed to invest back in the business through capex and marketing spend. Many if not most of the companies that PEs have bought over the years would have significantly underperformed what they did, or failed, without the capital infusion that PE brought. With so many PE backed businesses, there is a more vibrant job market because of so many well-capitalized businesses.

2) Most PE firms encourage employee equity ownership of their companies pretty far down the org chart, and KKR in particular is known for encouraging this kind of employee ownership. These equity stakes can pay for down payments of houses and kids' colleges when the companies achieve liquidity.

3) PE provides a critically important exit market for investment. Even family and individually owned businesses need a way out of their investment at some point, and PE is that way out. So an owner considering retooling a plant or developing a new product knows that they can recoup their investment at some point because there are so many PE firms that will be willing to buy them out in the future. This encourages business investment, which encourages job growth.

4) Small and mid-sized companies (the target market for PE firms) generate over 100% of all job growth, while large companies are generally net job losers.

PE professionals make a lot of money, so they do not deserve sympathy, but they are also personally investing meaningful dollars in every deal they do, so they are taking risk too. There are no bailouts when a PE firm blows it, and there are not huge government subsidies like there are in other industries like extraction and real estate.

PE's biggest problem going forward is higher interest rates. If interest rates stay near current levels over the next few years, and I expect they will, then PE firms will make a lot less money than they did in the 2010s. That is how the free market works.