Private Equity: Overvalued and Overrated?

American Affairs
19 min readJun 6, 2018
Flora’s Wagon of Fools, by Hendrik Pot, 1637

By Daniel Rasmussen

America is in the grips of a speculative frenzy. Investment bankers, private investment firms, and even a few dozen recently graduated MBAs labelling themselves “searchers” are calling, emailing, wining, and dining small business owners. Their goal is to translate prosaic small businesses into the poetry of private equity.

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