Bad Company

Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream

By: Megan Greenwell

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

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"[An] indictment of an industry that has cannily tilted the playing field in its favor. Bad Company details how clichéd abstractions like ‘consolidation’ and ‘efficiency’ have given cover to real betrayals.” - The New York Times

A timely work of singular reportage and a damning indictment of the private equity industry told through the stories of four American workers whose lives and communities were upended by the ruinous effects of private equity takeovers.

Private equity runs our country, yet few Americans have any idea how ingrained it is in their lives. Private equity controls our hospitals, daycare centers, supermarket chains, voting machine manufacturers, local newspapers, nursing home operators, fertility clinics, and prisons. The industry even manages highways, municipal water systems, fire departments, emergency medical services, and owns a growing swath of commercial and residential real estate.

Private equity executives, meanwhile, are not only among the wealthiest people in American society, but have grown to become modern-day barons with outsized influence on our politics and legislation. CEOs of firms like Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, and Apollo are rewarded with seats in the Senate and on the boards of the country’s most august institutions; meanwhile, entire communities are hollowed out as a result of their buyouts. Workers lose their jobs. Communities lose their institutions. Only private equity wins.

Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company unearths the hidden story of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.

In the tradition of deeply human reportage like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Megan Greenwell pulls back the curtain on shadowy multibillion dollar private equity firms, telling a larger story about how private equity is reshaping the economy, disrupting communities, and hollowing out the very idea of the American dream itself. Timely and masterfully told, Bad Company is a forceful rebuke of America’s most consequential, yet least understood economic forces.

People need to understand this issue

Good narration. Compelling narratives. Some hope provided but through individual actions, not government or business actions.

Never knew how Private Equity firms worked.

Broken down for people that did not understand how these firms work. Thank you, Megan.

must read for anyone living now

if you think private equity isn't negatively affecting the bigger picture in this country this is a must read. it's a must read period. thanks to the author for taking the efforts too bring more to light and thanks to all in the book for sharing their experiences and personal stories.

Lots of filler with interesting points now and then.

This book was filler. Lots of personal stories and details about people that really didn’t get to the point. It’s well written. It’s sometimes interesting. I wish the editor would’ve cut out half the book.

Extremely well done explanation of complex serious issue

Like most proper id heard private equity mentioned in the context of various organizations and companies but it was always presented in mysterious ways. This book did an excellent job explaining it all and also giving names and voices and stories to some of the many Americans harmed by it. This was a really important read for me and I’ll be recommending it to others.