The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson on how Private Equity billionaires bought up America and turned workers into serfs.
The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Gretchen Morgenson on how Private Equity billionaires bought up America and turned workers into serfs.
The U.S. economy is being held hostage by a small cohort of financiers who run private equity firms --- Apollo, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. These equity firms buy up and plunder businesses, piling on debt, refusing to reinvest, slashing staff and often driving companies into bankruptcy. The object is not to sustain businesses, but to harvest them for assets to make a short-term profit. Those who run these firms, such as Leon Black, Henry Kravis, Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein have amassed personal fortunes in the billions of dollars. The wreckage they orchestrate is taken out on workers who lose jobs or see salaries and benefits slashed, on pension funds them are depleted because of usurious fees or abolished and on our health and safety. Residents of nursing homes owned by private equity firms, for example, experience 10 percent more deaths because of staffing shortages and reduced compliance with standards of care. Private equity owned hospitals have created a crisis in the health-care system. Nursing shortages have contributed to one of every four unexpected hospital deaths or injuries caused by errors. The private-equity firms do not serve patients but profits. They have closed hospitals, especially in rural America. They cut back on stockpiles of vital medical devices, including ventilators and personal protective equipment. In 1975 the U.S. had about 1.5 million hospital beds and a population of about 216 million people. Now, with a population of over 330 million people, we have around 925,000 beds. Fifty-six percent of Americans have medical debt, even though many have insurance, and 23 percent owe $10,000 or more. Emergency room visits - emergency rooms are often run by private equity firms -- contributed to medical debt for 44 percent of Americans. At the same time, the health care system, because of this slash-and-burn assault, was unprepared to handle the Covid epidemic, seeing 330,000 Americans die during the pandemic because they could not afford to go to a doctor on time. These privity equity firms, like an invasive species, are ubiquitous. They have acquired educational institutions, utility companies and retail chains while bleeding taxpayers of hundreds of billions in subsidies, made possible by bought-and-paid for prosecutors, politicians and regulators. Joining me to discuss private equity firms and their assault on the economy is Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gretchen Morgensen, who along with Joshua Rosner, wrote “These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – and Wrecks – America.”
Serfs had holidays & feast days on which they were allowed free movement to parts of the township, village, etc., reserved for Nobility & Kings. They also had ample skills in valuable areas like Farming, Herding & Craftsmanship... The Modern American 'working poor' are in a far worse state today as tens of millions do not have such luxuries or skills available to them any longer.
I haven't seen the deep flaws in capitalism, as practiced is today's USA, examined with more acuity since the days (not so long ago) of Bill Moyers. Great work, Mr. Hedges. Thank you.
What the author describes is exactly the model of extraction that the IMF and World Bank use on the global south.
They force the sale of public entities, loading them with debt and cutting services to make them more attractive for investors, they charge usurious fees on debt and the money generated, in the case of the Global South goes to pay the interest to the bond holders.
This is precisely what happened in Argentina.
Now, the US is feeling the pain of the extraction-rentier model.
But instead of the IMF, it is the new corporate feudal financial institutions we put in place for 75 years coming home to roost.
And workers suffer loss of jobs, no health care, no social safety net --- all due to the debt holders, the donors for the two party duopoly.
America is being 'Thirdworldized' and it takes no genius to see the austerity planned by the corporate plunders and their coin operated politicians is being firmly set in place.
This reminds me of Thom Hartmann's article "How the Richest Democracy in the World Abandons Americans". And we wonder why people follow our modern Pied Piper, The Donald.
And don't forget that Hedges actually pushed the "safe & effective" narrative on us when he had ample evidence that exactly the opposite was true ...
Did you know ...
On DEC 2, 2021 ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This development proved that the COVID vax WAS NOT "safe & effective" ...
And then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... Most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges openly admitted that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ...
Lives and livelihoods can hang in the balance of reckless comments like this, but clearly this man did not give a hoot about the consequences ...
I also found it a bit strange but not surprising that Hedges did not mention BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in this article ... ya see, Fink is the guy we see sitting up there at those WEF conclaves in Davos ... but as a rule, Hedges will not even mention key Davos figures like Schwab, Harari and Fink ... and to my knowledge he has never mentioned THE GREAT RESET ... his critical style has really changed since the March 2020 lockdowns ... Hedges is indirect ... he'll rail on about the corporate elites and drop a few names as he did here, but he won't directly implicate the people at the top like Fink, who really run the show ... these people are completely off of his radar ... he would rather have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ...
The american empire is rapidly disintergrating. It is EATINtG EATING MORE AND MORE OF ITSELF and not realizing that the outcome will be EXTINCTION. 'HAVE MORE IT'S DELICIOUS AND YOU CAN EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT' . Shades of Oscar Wilde and the Portrait of Dorian Gray. THE USA IS HIDEOUS AND deserves ITS TERMINAL CANCER.
Morgensen's book is probably well researched and the unethical business practices she writes about are no doubt well documented. However, her book will change nothing. Notice that I said unethical; not illegal. The system of corruption is so embedded throughout government at this point that we could never hope to stamp out what should be illegal business practices (like her example of Envision) with new laws against those practices. To engage in such nonsense is simply resigning ourselves to pointless legalese wack-a-mole.
Fortunately, there is one simple solution to nearly all this monkey business. It's called the passage of a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment.
It should immediately be demanded by the American people. The only reason these private equity firms engage in these practices is because they are largely focused on draining the American taxpayer whose government guarantees all the debt they pile up every year (over 10 trillion alone since Covid19 declared state of emergency) financing these types of deviant business practices. There are others, to be sure (i.e. 501 (c) (3)'s, etc). As I have said before on this forum, the U.S. government was not even 1 trillion in debt when Ronald Reagan took office. We now have, not even a half century later, eclipsed that amount by over 34 times! It currently costs the U.S. taxpayer $2B a day to service that debt. Although private equity pirates have helped put us there in a contributory manner, the financial damage of this collective debt is worse than all the private equity firms combined, in my opinion. Morgensen can talk about the billions reaped by the likes of Leon Black all she wants, but when you start talking 10's of trillions of dollars in debt, you are in a far different stratosphere. Debts at this level matter more significantly. Large amounts of acquired debt is what ultimately sinks these companies--and what is ultimately sinking the U.S. taxpayer. The principle is no different--only the scale. Yet we allow Congress and the White House to pass one "Continuing Resolution" after another (one just yesterday) without nary a peep. Again, the tax payer appears hoodwinked by the clever use of the word "Resolution" just as they are by the rebranding of financial pirating in private "Equity" referenced by Morgensen.
I believe the amendment I mentioned earlier is the only avenue of salvation left. If you laugh at this possibility, than you have your head in the sand and are part of the problem, not the solution.
"At the highest level of the capitalist ruling elite, there are those who understand full well that their system has entered into a crisis that can end in only two ways: either the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the expropriation of the tiny minority of billionaires and corporate bosses by the working class; or a counterrevolutionary bloodbath of such proportions that it would make the crimes of imperialism in the twentieth century pale by comparison ((http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/06/pers-d06.html).
The ruling classes of the world understand their precarious position of privilege and wealth and are now actively amassing weapons of mass destruction, assembling global armies of police and increasing their attacks on democratic rights in an effort to preserve their hierarchies, mammon and privileges.
While these uber-rich accumulate ever more powerful weapons of war, from Spain to South Africa and from Peru to Pakistan, people all over the globe are continuing to demand a world that is more reasonable, just, free of violence and ultimately fairer.
They understand that we cannot submit ourselves to the savage scrim of poverty and grayness, shutting away justice and the stars of equality and night."
Transnational, cartel fascism i what was described in this video. Companies agreeing how much to produce, not to compete and they say it is a free market.
It i a privatized planned economy that will vomit up despair and its own contradictions.
Please listen to Ralph Naders recent podcast. This movement if supported may take back our country and constitution.
Bishop William Barber is President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, which was established to train communities in moral movement building. He is Co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Founding Director and Professor at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.
We should stop thinking what can we do to what will we do.
Great interview as usual Chris! For a good chuckle about the seriousness of the Political duopoly that allowed the corporate takeover happen. Check out Tommy Dougal's video of "Mouse Land". From the 1950's or 60's. He was the father of Canadian health care, from Saskatchewan. Originally born in Scotland with a bad leg, a surgeon took pity on him and operated saving his leg for free. He NEVER forgot! The leader of the CCP then the NDP the Socialist party in Canada, he should have been Prime Minister. The RCMP like the FBI had reams of secret police reports of his speeches. Kiefer Sutherland is his grandson on his mothers side. The video is on you tube, is 7 minutes and 47 secs long! If you don't laugh and commiserate about the reality of the system we mice live in, you are part of the problem and probably a Corporate fascist Neo Con or Limousine Liberal ! The Ruling Cats !
Mike Benz -- I need 6 hours, but here I explained in 6 minutes the 2 main drivers, from the Blob's perspective, of the question that hangs over all of modern politics: "Why Ukraine?" – Feb 28
( Unfotunatelly, on BlazeTV of village idiot grifter, Glenn Beck )
Excellent interview of Gretchen Morgensen, Chris. I especially appreciated your persistently and apologetically injecting your can't-wait requests for clarification into her remarks and her graciously accepting and responding to them: very nice as well as vital interactions!
Please consider adding some salient links as endnotes to your substack podcast intros, especially any that would point to alternatives for action in response to the issues discussed, and thus convert your informative podcasts into action-oriented podcasts as well, to whatever extent you like.
Serfs had holidays & feast days on which they were allowed free movement to parts of the township, village, etc., reserved for Nobility & Kings. They also had ample skills in valuable areas like Farming, Herding & Craftsmanship... The Modern American 'working poor' are in a far worse state today as tens of millions do not have such luxuries or skills available to them any longer.
I haven't seen the deep flaws in capitalism, as practiced is today's USA, examined with more acuity since the days (not so long ago) of Bill Moyers. Great work, Mr. Hedges. Thank you.
This is "free market capitalism" , baby. Freedumbs and Liberties!!
What the author describes is exactly the model of extraction that the IMF and World Bank use on the global south.
They force the sale of public entities, loading them with debt and cutting services to make them more attractive for investors, they charge usurious fees on debt and the money generated, in the case of the Global South goes to pay the interest to the bond holders.
This is precisely what happened in Argentina.
Now, the US is feeling the pain of the extraction-rentier model.
But instead of the IMF, it is the new corporate feudal financial institutions we put in place for 75 years coming home to roost.
And workers suffer loss of jobs, no health care, no social safety net --- all due to the debt holders, the donors for the two party duopoly.
America is being 'Thirdworldized' and it takes no genius to see the austerity planned by the corporate plunders and their coin operated politicians is being firmly set in place.
This is what Latin America fights everyday.
Oligarchs and Plutocrats
This reminds me of Thom Hartmann's article "How the Richest Democracy in the World Abandons Americans". And we wonder why people follow our modern Pied Piper, The Donald.
More slight of hand commentary by the master of indirect criticism, Chris Hedges:
"... seeing 330,000 Americans die during the pandemic because they could not afford to go to a doctor on time."
Not exactly, not quite ...
He deftly ignores the larger problem: people are actually dying from the COVID vax itself:
1) VAERS data is clear: The COVID vax kills 1 person per 1,000 doses (676,000 dead Americans)
https://kirschsubstack.com/p/vaers-data-is-crystal-clear-the-covid
2) VAERS data: 72% of all reported VACCINE DEATHS are attributed to COVID-19 injections:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-08-11-vaers-72-percent-vaccine-deaths-covid-injections.html
And don't forget that Hedges actually pushed the "safe & effective" narrative on us when he had ample evidence that exactly the opposite was true ...
Did you know ...
On DEC 2, 2021 ...
The FDA was compelled by a court ruling to release Phizer's vax trial data that revealed 1,223 post-jab deaths and 34,762 adverse events in the first 10 weeks of its trial ... The FDA attempted to delay the full release of this data for 75 years! ...
This development proved that the COVID vax WAS NOT "safe & effective" ...
And then, just 30 days later ...
On JAN 1, 2022 ...
Chris Hedges made this comment on the Krystal Kyle & Friends Podcast (Episode #54):
Go to the 1:08:47 mark:
https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/p/episode-54-audio-chris-hedges#details
"I don't think we're going to stop the pandemic and mutations until everybody gets vaccinated" ...
Chris Hedges DID NOT have to take sides on this issue ... He could have said it's a personal decision, but no ... Most people would never tell another person to "walk the plank" if they knew better, but that's exactly what Hedges did here ... he knew the VAX was rushed to market after only one year (the average is 10 years), he knew about the explosive FDA FOIA release and he had to have seen the many videos of vax-injured people ... but he chose to push the "safe & effective" narrative anyway! ... and then about 2m after making that same comment during the interview above, Hedges openly admitted that he "does not trust Moderna or Phizer" ...
Lives and livelihoods can hang in the balance of reckless comments like this, but clearly this man did not give a hoot about the consequences ...
I also found it a bit strange but not surprising that Hedges did not mention BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in this article ... ya see, Fink is the guy we see sitting up there at those WEF conclaves in Davos ... but as a rule, Hedges will not even mention key Davos figures like Schwab, Harari and Fink ... and to my knowledge he has never mentioned THE GREAT RESET ... his critical style has really changed since the March 2020 lockdowns ... Hedges is indirect ... he'll rail on about the corporate elites and drop a few names as he did here, but he won't directly implicate the people at the top like Fink, who really run the show ... these people are completely off of his radar ... he would rather have us believe the problem is TRUMP-MAGA ...
The american empire is rapidly disintergrating. It is EATINtG EATING MORE AND MORE OF ITSELF and not realizing that the outcome will be EXTINCTION. 'HAVE MORE IT'S DELICIOUS AND YOU CAN EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT' . Shades of Oscar Wilde and the Portrait of Dorian Gray. THE USA IS HIDEOUS AND deserves ITS TERMINAL CANCER.
Hedges is a podcast commentator, like so many now.
America is a sadistic nation, of this their is no doubt.
Masochistic too.
One listens, reads and dialogues and then come to their own conclusions which are hopefully open to change.
The interview i the issue, not Hedges.
He is trying to use guests to let you know of the ruthless serfdom that has ignited across America, who controls it and its ramnifications.
It is also a good primer as to how asset stripping works.
Try to concentrate on what is being said, the purpose and by whom.
If you have a dispute with Hedges, stop listening.
For it is the content that should be of concern not what Hedges said in some prior speech.
Morgensen's book is probably well researched and the unethical business practices she writes about are no doubt well documented. However, her book will change nothing. Notice that I said unethical; not illegal. The system of corruption is so embedded throughout government at this point that we could never hope to stamp out what should be illegal business practices (like her example of Envision) with new laws against those practices. To engage in such nonsense is simply resigning ourselves to pointless legalese wack-a-mole.
Fortunately, there is one simple solution to nearly all this monkey business. It's called the passage of a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment.
It should immediately be demanded by the American people. The only reason these private equity firms engage in these practices is because they are largely focused on draining the American taxpayer whose government guarantees all the debt they pile up every year (over 10 trillion alone since Covid19 declared state of emergency) financing these types of deviant business practices. There are others, to be sure (i.e. 501 (c) (3)'s, etc). As I have said before on this forum, the U.S. government was not even 1 trillion in debt when Ronald Reagan took office. We now have, not even a half century later, eclipsed that amount by over 34 times! It currently costs the U.S. taxpayer $2B a day to service that debt. Although private equity pirates have helped put us there in a contributory manner, the financial damage of this collective debt is worse than all the private equity firms combined, in my opinion. Morgensen can talk about the billions reaped by the likes of Leon Black all she wants, but when you start talking 10's of trillions of dollars in debt, you are in a far different stratosphere. Debts at this level matter more significantly. Large amounts of acquired debt is what ultimately sinks these companies--and what is ultimately sinking the U.S. taxpayer. The principle is no different--only the scale. Yet we allow Congress and the White House to pass one "Continuing Resolution" after another (one just yesterday) without nary a peep. Again, the tax payer appears hoodwinked by the clever use of the word "Resolution" just as they are by the rebranding of financial pirating in private "Equity" referenced by Morgensen.
I believe the amendment I mentioned earlier is the only avenue of salvation left. If you laugh at this possibility, than you have your head in the sand and are part of the problem, not the solution.
These companies will never cease control. they are medieval financial fortresses and we are locked within the castle walls.
At least in the UK Britain lost its hegemony and went on to live with it, giving up colonies left and right.
The US hubris is much worse.
Emerging from WWII with 50% of the worldd's wealth America i at 25% now. and declining.
For the corporations farmed out their labor, imperialism, to other nations where labor is cheaper, namely China.
And that reminds me of the quote from Karl Marx: "The workers have no homeland."
This is more certain today.
The cyclone fence and barbed wire are to keep Americans in, as much as cheap labor out.
I think two things must occur and not in any order but dialectically:
1. The American people must understand they live in an Empire and the costs associated with maintaining it.
2. The American military survei8llance complex, or whatever one wants to refer to is in complete control.
We are living behind lines.
This crime syndicate explained in this video was the product of such men as Meyer Lansky, head of the National Crime Commission.
When Capone was convicted for tax evasion Lansky set up off shores to handle all transactions so there was never a trace him.
Wicked times.
This is a bit old, but makes the point.
General News 1/3/2015 at 1:06 PM EST H3'ed 1/3/15
The Blood on the Blade: Global Inequality and War
Yet economic inequality is not an inevitable feature of life; it is socially constructed and the result of deliberate public policy choices (http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/even-it-up-time-to-end-extreme-inequality-333012).
As the World Socialist Website so astutely noted:
"At the highest level of the capitalist ruling elite, there are those who understand full well that their system has entered into a crisis that can end in only two ways: either the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the expropriation of the tiny minority of billionaires and corporate bosses by the working class; or a counterrevolutionary bloodbath of such proportions that it would make the crimes of imperialism in the twentieth century pale by comparison ((http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12/06/pers-d06.html).
The ruling classes of the world understand their precarious position of privilege and wealth and are now actively amassing weapons of mass destruction, assembling global armies of police and increasing their attacks on democratic rights in an effort to preserve their hierarchies, mammon and privileges.
While these uber-rich accumulate ever more powerful weapons of war, from Spain to South Africa and from Peru to Pakistan, people all over the globe are continuing to demand a world that is more reasonable, just, free of violence and ultimately fairer.
They understand that we cannot submit ourselves to the savage scrim of poverty and grayness, shutting away justice and the stars of equality and night."
https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?p=4&f=The-Blood-on-the-Blade-Gl-by-Danny-Weil-Billionaires_Blood-Money_Capitalism_Capitalism-150103-80.html
Transnational, cartel fascism i what was described in this video. Companies agreeing how much to produce, not to compete and they say it is a free market.
It i a privatized planned economy that will vomit up despair and its own contradictions.
Please listen to Ralph Naders recent podcast. This movement if supported may take back our country and constitution.
Bishop William Barber is President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, which was established to train communities in moral movement building. He is Co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and Founding Director and Professor at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.
We should stop thinking what can we do to what will we do.
For some reason I think you already had her on but either way I think you should have her on again. Big fan of the financial interviewees.
Great interview as usual Chris! For a good chuckle about the seriousness of the Political duopoly that allowed the corporate takeover happen. Check out Tommy Dougal's video of "Mouse Land". From the 1950's or 60's. He was the father of Canadian health care, from Saskatchewan. Originally born in Scotland with a bad leg, a surgeon took pity on him and operated saving his leg for free. He NEVER forgot! The leader of the CCP then the NDP the Socialist party in Canada, he should have been Prime Minister. The RCMP like the FBI had reams of secret police reports of his speeches. Kiefer Sutherland is his grandson on his mothers side. The video is on you tube, is 7 minutes and 47 secs long! If you don't laugh and commiserate about the reality of the system we mice live in, you are part of the problem and probably a Corporate fascist Neo Con or Limousine Liberal ! The Ruling Cats !
Very enlightening! Thank you Chris!
THANK YOU !!
Mike Benz -- I need 6 hours, but here I explained in 6 minutes the 2 main drivers, from the Blob's perspective, of the question that hangs over all of modern politics: "Why Ukraine?" – Feb 28
( Unfotunatelly, on BlazeTV of village idiot grifter, Glenn Beck )
https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1762991582070874119?s=20
"Not About Nato" | "Never About NATO" | "Nothing to Do With NATO"
OUTSTANDING
Matt Orfalea. Oct 18, 2023 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf5xEBwBhds&t=92s
Excellent interview of Gretchen Morgensen, Chris. I especially appreciated your persistently and apologetically injecting your can't-wait requests for clarification into her remarks and her graciously accepting and responding to them: very nice as well as vital interactions!
Please consider adding some salient links as endnotes to your substack podcast intros, especially any that would point to alternatives for action in response to the issues discussed, and thus convert your informative podcasts into action-oriented podcasts as well, to whatever extent you like.