https://archive.ph/IcNsO

In a bit of synchronicity, we have two accounts that describe different aspects by which private equity limited partners, such as public pension funds like CalPERS, private pension funds, endowments, life insurers, and sovereign wealth funds are all cheerfully fleeced by private equity fund managers, which in the trade are called “general partners”. The Financial Times describes what ought to be a scam, continuation funds, which allow general partners to collect yet more fees on doggy old deals. Stanford Business sets forth the limited partners’ tender faith that general partners can generate alpha (return for investor skill) on a strategy that is leveraged equity in a very toppy stock market. Oh, and after many studies have demonstrated that to the extent private equity outperforms, the general partners harvest that through their fees and expenses, resulting in net returns to limited partners that more or less equate to stock market returns, but with higher risks.^1^

^1^ The evidence is so overwhelming that we hope you forgive us for not updating our tally from a 2020 post:

For the sake of completeness, here’s some of the extensive evidence from our archives that private equity not only doesn’t earn enough to compensate for its higher risk, but has even become merely an “on par with stocks” level investment:

• Experts effectively or actually telling CalPERS that private equity does not outperform:
  • CalPERS Debunks Private Equity: Executive Summary
  • Private Equity Expert Dr. Ashby Monk Repudiates CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost’s Private Equity Scheme During and Immediately After Presentation at CalPERS
• CalPERS staff trying to hide private equity underperformance
  • CalPERS Used Sleight of Hand, Accounting Tricks, to Make False “There is No Alternative” Claim for Private Equity
  • CalPERS Admits Its New Private Equity Funds Will Dilute Returns, Seeks to Change Benchmark to Hide That; Presents Other Questionable Claims as Top Investors Underperform Due to “Alternative Investments”
• Analyses by non-captured parties
  • Why Private Equity Does Not Outperform
  • New Study Undermines Rationale for Investing in Private Equity and CalPERS Strategy in Particular, as Oregon CIO Demonstrates that Public Pension Funds Are Dumb Money
  • Even Endowments Like Harvard, Former Top Investors in Hedge and Private Equity Funds, No Longer Beat Boring Stocks and Bonds
  • New Study Slams Public Pension Funds’ Alternative Investments as Drag on Performance, Identifies CalPERS as One of the Worst “Negative Alphas”; Shows Folly of CalPERS’ Desperate Plan to Increase Private Equity and Debt and Go Bigger Using Leverage
  • Oxford Professor Phalippou: Since 2006, Private Equity Has Produced Only S&P 500 Returns While Reaping $400+ Billion in Fees
  • Private Equity Clearly Inferior to Public Equity: Delivers Similar Returns With Lower Liquidity

Paper effectively makes the point that class warfare is a significant factor in why inflation persists.

Here's another blurb about the paper from https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/07/why-inflation-sticks-around-the-role-of-class-warfare-in-price-persistence.html

This post makes an extremely useful observation, even though it is a bit more in economese than is ideal, despite it being aimed at generalist readers. It effectively makes the point that class warfare is a significant factor in why inflation persists. But oddly the author is loath to use the phrase “class warfare” even though he describes a struggle between labor and business owners/operators.

There is ample historical and recent proof of his view. In the 1970s stagflation, cost of living adjustments to worker pay, which for most enterprises is their biggest single expense, kept those costs increasing at the same clip as inflation, which meant they would typically seek to preserve margins by then increasing prices to a similar degree. Even though white collar workers generally did not have formal COLA, it had become a widespread practice to also increase their compensation in line with inflation so as to preserve their status relative to union/factory personnel. This is one reason that economists who have done granular analysis of the much-derided Nixon wage/price freeze says the Administration threw in the towel just as it was beginning to work…if nothing else, by resetting the inflation level used in the COLAs.

In the current iteration of how class warfare works at a time when corporations have greatly reduced labor bargaining power, we have repeatedly pointed out that in the US, corporate profits are nearly twice the level they were at as a percent of GDP in the early 2000s….a level Warren Buffett had deemed at the time to be unsustainably high. In the sticky Covid-induced inflation, many commentators have accused companies of engaging in “greedflation,” as in putting through price increases that were not necessary to cover cost rises, under the cover of general inflation. We’ve confirmed that behavior recently in the case of Kraft Heinz, where their price gouging accelerated the inroads made by more modestly priced store brands.

https://archive.ph/TjDXv

AI datacenter boom is going to significantly raise prices for other/competing electricity consumers.

Only solution is solar+battery DC power supplies to datacenters. OP doesn't distinguish between large and small transformers, but the US domestic sourcing requirement on federal projects is for the larger transformers.

Never heard of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_bond

Catastrophe bonds (also known as cat bonds) are a subset of insurance-linked securities (ILS) that transfer a specified set of risks from a sponsor to investors. They were created and first used in the mid-1990s in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew and the Northridge earthquake.

Just two weeks after President Donald Trump sent a handwritten letter to Powell demanding lower interest rates, Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), accused Powell of breaking the law by failing to comply with government oversight regulations and lying to Congress about details of an approximately $2.5 billion planned renovation of the Fed’s headquarters.

While some central banks, such as the European Central Bank and the Bank of Mexico, have lowered their benchmark lending rate a few times this year, the Fed has not. One big reason for that is the major policy shifts since Trump took office. Officials have said they want to see how those changes affect the economy first before considering further rate cuts.

Powell for his part has avoided responding to Trump’s harsh criticism, noting that the Fed is only focused on successfully taming inflation and preserving the labor market’s health.

The latest criticism about the rising costs of the Fed’s headquarters may signal the administration is laying the groundwork to justify firing Powell, said Ed Mills, a policy analyst at Raymond James.

Trump and his allies have said the Fed’s decision to keep rates steady is politically motivated, but Powell has signaled Trump’s tariff policy – and its potential to stoke inflation – have played a role.