Private equity didn't. People did. We really need to get rid of limited liability and corporate fictions.

A human ATM is just a teller.

It isn’t the fault of private equity that banks make excessive loans against assets in a leveraged buyout. Banks (such as per the article, The Royal Bank of Scotland) have a duty to ensure that their loans are of properly assessed risk, and if the PE firm that wants to or has bought an asset does not look qualified to run it, then the banks should not be making the loans. Articles that keep casually dropping triggers like “[t]hey rubbed their hands together and said, 'Sooner or later, as the demand increases, the prices must go up'” are not seeking workable solutions but capitalizing on their ability to raise ire. It’s much more yet another article that does its best to paint a profit motive as an evil, completely ignoring that any endeavor that is not profitable is going to die sooner rather than later, and when it’s a government run endeavor then the taxpayers, who were completely uninvolved in the deicsions of where their money should be spent, are the ones left on the hook - HTF is that better?

Frankly given the sorry mid/long-term state of the UK economy, yes, this is the absolute essential thing to be moaning about...

And frankly moaning about this used to be right wing conspiracies a few years ago so yey for another pendulum swing...

The market is perfectly efficient, value is well attributed, lobbying is a social good, being rich means you’re smart and should have special privileges, optimizing for returns on investment is equivalent to optimizing for a better society

Obviously I’m kidding, and something is rotten

My parents ended up being forced by circumstances to move into a retirement home about five years ago. Fortunately, the place turned out to be run by people who mostly cared about their clients and so my parents' lives were basically OK, except that the food sucked (which AFAICT is par for the course at retirement homes). But a few months ago the place was acquired by a different company, which is trying to squeeze out higher profits. Staffing and services are being cut, and prices are going up. Even the food got worse, which I didn't think was even possible. The response when someone complains is, "If you don't like it you are free to leave."

Yeah, right. My barely mobile 90-year-old parents, one of whom has Parkinson's, are just going to pack up and go. They know perfectly well that they have a captive audience.

Thankfully, my mother died before the acquisition, and my father died last week, only a few months after the acquisition, so I don't have to deal with this any more. But caveat emptor: if you ever go into a retirement home, think about what will happen if they change ownership. Even if it looks great, or even acceptable, now, there is no guarantee that it will still be great, or even acceptable, tomorrow, unless you somehow manage to negotiate such a guarantee. I have no idea what a contract provision like that would even look like. But I am going to be facing this problem myself some day, so I'd love to hear ideas.