Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/04/private-equity-boom-hospital-job-layoff

Private equity investors also bought thousands of healthcare facilities in the US in recent years, including non-profit hospice care, rural hospitals and small-town dentists’ offices.

But this wave of buyouts is running smack into a wall of persistently high interest rates, rising buyout prices and pressure over moribund returns.

Private equity funds are sitting on a “record number of unsold companies, many of which they’ve been unable to sell … or at least unable to sell at the prices that they’re looking for”, said Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an industry watchdog.

The current catastrophic bullshitting tool of choice for the Finance industry is Private Equity.

Also see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/04/private-equity-boom-hospital-job-layoff

It’s unclear whether we have a total crisis on our hands, in part due to shady reporting standards at pension funds, but it is clear that we have a real problem in private credit regardless. The issue is downstream of the problem in private equity where holding periods are up, and by extension, the net asset value (NAV) of funds held over seven years (sometimes referred to as “zombie funds”) has doubled since 2021. They can’t sell the asset, so they build continuation vehicles to recapitalize and hide the struggle that’s going on. But the real risk of this slowdown weighs on retirees, current and future.

One has to ask "Where does the money in private equity come from?" and the answer is "high net worth individuals and institutions" i.e. billionaires make up a large part, and the rest is other large pools of cash such as sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, etc.

So the answer is that private equity phenomenon is the result of income inequality, i.e. people with large quantities of cash that they personally have no idea what to do with.

The extremely rich loan their money to "private equity fund managers" who charge exorbitant fees and comissions to make sure that their clients' cash doesn't lose value to inflation.

So if you're asking why a nice small company that you like gets bought by private equity, then enshittified or closed down, not because it isn't profitable, but because it isn't making enough money, there's your answer.

God I hope the PE glut nukes itself. That would be so fucking incredible for the long term, in so many different ways, in a ton of different domains.

As long as there's capitalism, there'll be capitalists. I get poo-pooed almost every time I say this, but you'll never convince me the words capitalism and capitalize - meaning "to take advantage of" - are unrelated. Yeah, the inevitable massive recession/depression that is coming will cause some regulation to happen, but those behind it will do their damnedest to keep it as minimal as possible so they can pull their shit again, followed by gradual perversion of any regs they can't prevent from the get-go.

EDIT:
TL;DR: They may dig their graves, but - like the undead - they'll be back to suck the life out of the living.

Mostly spot on. I'd add that a lot of pensions and 401ks are wrapped up in private equity/credit as they've been showing good returns (on paper at least). I'm rooting for their demise but expect if/when they take a big hit, it won't just be billionaires hurt

It's not income inequality, because for tax purposes most billionaires don't take an income. It's wealth inequality.

We need a law banning private equity firms in medical care and residential housing. Actually, they shouldn't be allowed period. Nobody can start a business with their stupid high ever increasing rents. They are a scourge to society and should be penalized out of it.

Who cares? There are no retirement funds good enough. We're fucked anyways.