Podcast

Returning to the podcast is Mike Rothman of Cornerstone Analytics, a 40 year veteran of the oil markets and a fearless observer of all things energy. In his last appearance, Mike’s no-holds-barred approach to his field of expertise was a big hit with listeners and this week, Mike returns to update his views on the […] This content is only available for active subscribers. Subscribe

Joining me in this episode of The Grant Williams Podcast is Matt Stoller, former Congressional staffer and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy and the excellent Substack BIG. Matt’s work on the threat posed by monopoly power is exceptional and, in this fascinating conversation we cover the challenges he’s faced […] This content is only available for active subscribers. Subscribe

Joining me on this edition of The Grant Williams Podcast is returning guest, Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist at QI Research, LLC in Dallas, TX. Danielle’s knowledge of the inner workings of the Federal Reserve has been invaluable both to her clients and the broader financial community in recent years and her analysis […] This content is only available for active subscribers. Subscribe

Author Raymond Baker joins me to discuss his new book, Invisible Trillions: How Financial Secrecy Is Imperiling Capitalism and Democracy and the Way to Renew Our Broken System.

Raymond is an American businessman, scholar, author, and authority on financial crime. He is the founder and president of Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization in Washington, DC working to curtail illicit financial flows.

After graduating Harvard Business School in 1960, Raymond’s career began in Nigeria where he was afforded a close-up look at how corruption can affect and impede both business and progress. After relocating back to the United States in the mid-1970s, Raymond continued doing business in Africa and Central and South America, gaining first-hand experience of how illicit capital flows were impacting the development of capitalism across the globe.

In 2005, Raymond’s first book, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System explored illicit capital flows, including a full exploration of their context and root causes and their financial impact on the world economy and his latest work updates the story in shocking fashion.

Author Brendan Ballou joins me to discuss his superb new book, Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America in the latest episode of The Grant Williams Podcast. After graduating Columbia and Stanford Law, Brendan served as a Federal prosecutor and Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, where his mandate was to investigate private equity’s influence on financial markets.

What he found shocked Brendan and moved him to write a book chronicling the outsize effect Private Equity has had in so much of American life over the last several decades.

From nursing homes to prison phone companies, Brendan details how private equity has reshaped American business by raising prices, reducing quality, cutting jobs, and shifting resources from productive to unproductive parts of the economy. Forced to take on huge debts and pay extractive fees, companies purchased by private equity firms are often left bankrupt, or shells of their former selves, with consequences to communities that long depended on them.

Not only that, but Brendan explains how, with the backing of lobbyists and various arms of government itself, PE firms have availed themselves of powerful tailwinds as they’ve swallowed up large parts of corporate America.