Podcast: The BREAK—DOWN (LS 32 · TOP 5% what is this?)
Episode: The Billionaire Machine w/ Hettie O'Brien
Pub date: 2026-03-26

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You may never have heard of private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, Bain Capital or the Carlyle Group, but in recent decades they have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own your hospitals, your nurseries, your energy systems. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the home you rent and the food you eat. In their rise to power, they have reshaped capitalism in their own image – all by using debt as a weapon to produce vast returns for the companies who own and control them. The implications for inequality, for how our economy functions, and for the fight to build a sustainable future, are profound.

Our guest this week is the Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, who is the author of new book The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself.

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