Right and if your entire knowledge about PE was watching Barbarians at the Gate and/or reading about Martin Shkreli, you’d come to that conclusion, just as if y

Right and if your entire knowledge about PE was watching Barbarians at the Gate and/or reading about Martin Shkreli, you’d come to that conclusion, just as if your entire knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry was based on Purdue Pharma. LBO is just one type of PE, and even among LBO, there are lots of stories about firms fixing a business. For every K-Mart there’s a Dollar General. And even with the K-Mart type stories, those businesses were 100% failing without intervention anyway. They might have done so in a way that was better for shareholders, and that’s an egregious example. But they’re not generally parting out thriving companies and leaving banks holding a bunch of bad debt. Banks are smart and good companies are almost always better off whole, just as a running car is almost always worth more than the parts.