So does private equity own everything?

If you like hard-hitting, long-winded, comedic investigations into incredibly boring financial topics led by the baby-faced assassin of the newsroom Dan Toomey, boy are you gonna love this video.

Thanks to the following folks for their generous help with this investigation: Gretchen Morgenson, Senior financial reporter, NBC News Investigations; Jeff Hooke, Senior finance lecturer at Johns Hopkins and former broad-based finance and investment executive; Will Flanary, ophthalmologist and comedian better known as Dr. Glaucomflecken; and Paul Kiernan, Wall Street Journal reporter covering finance and regulation.

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Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global Management, The Carlyle Group, and TPG either declined or didn’t respond to our request for an interview. The American Investment Council, a leading lobbying and research organization for the private equity industry, also declined to participate.

Video by Dan Toomey and Henry Stockwell

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What does private equity actually do?

00:00—01:18: Intro
01:18—03:05: Defining private equity
03:05—05:04: Private equity's huge footprint
05:04—06:23: How buyouts work
06:23—10:27: What happens to the bought out
10:27—13:14: How did PE get so big?
13:14—14:34: PE executives are rich af
14:34—16:33: But what about the returns?
16:33—17:57: Breaking news
17:57—19:21: Existential crisis
19:21—19:59: Stuffing their privates