Leo Hindery Believes Wall Street is the Root of All Evil
We knew Leo Hindery, private equity investor, founder of the YES Network and staunch Democrat, was not a big fan of Wall Street. But his latest column on regulatory reform basically blames financiers for, well, just about everything.
. . .the profit-driven, greedy, selfish institution that with its unbridled compensation practices and current light-touch regulatory regime is, I truly believe, behind almost every major societal and economic ill that has befallen the United States since 1980.
Damn, Leo, that’s harsh. But he goes on.
In the specific case of Wall Streeters, if we miss 'getting' them now, as they say, these greedy guys will simply get greedier and their practices more harmful as their securities become ever more complex and thus beyond any reasonable regulatory oversight capability.
But wait, being a beneficiary of carried interest as an MD of InterMedia Partners, you’d think Hindery might side with the industry against the current proposals to raise taxes on partners at PE funds. Think again.
As sort of a 'canary in the coal mine' to larger financial reform, we've seen on the relatively simple issue of trying to reform the abusive tax treatment of "carried interest", which costs the Treasury $10 to $12 billion per year, just how disingenuous, misleading and vile the anti-financial reform crowd can be.
Not only does Hindery support the increase in carried interest taxes, he thinks the PE lobby is spewing total “B.S., as neither overall financial reform nor, least of all, reforming carried interest has anything at all to do with 'job creation', and it is unconscionable to threaten the American people this way.”
Leopards Can’t Change Their Spots; Neither Can Wall Streeters [HuffPo]
