According to Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times, hedge funds are sitting on about a trillion dollars in cash that they need to invest:
Some private equity firms have put the word out to Wall Street banks that they want to go “elephant hunting” — seeking big deals worth as much as $10 billion — and are willing to pay a special bounty for bringing them acquisition targets.
So, look, it’s nice to see that the .01% have more money than they know what to do with it, so I come not to decry that, but to decry what they intend to do with it if they can ever get it together to do something at all.
There was a time, wasn’t there, when people with money got together and did constructive things with it. They built railroads, for example, or factories. They invested in other people who had ideas for building other things. Sure, they were heartless Robber Barons, but at least when they were done we had railroads. Now, apparently, the thing to do is to buy already existing companies to get as much value out of them as you can. Whether that value is achieved by raping the company or making it grow is completely irrelevant. The last think they are looking to do is build or make things. After all, we have Kickstarter for that.
There is a solution, brothers and sisters. Let them be taxed, and let us spend that $1 trillion dollars on things people need, and, as Bob Dylan said in an entirely different context, “country’ll grow”.
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