THESE ARE THE PLUNDERERS

A narrative investigation into how big finance, especially private equity, has caused the diversion of assets and income from lower classes and small businesses to the most wealthy and powerful, written by the bestselling authors of Reckless Endangerment.

Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the insidious debt-laden world of private equity, revealing how it leeches profits from everyday people, tanks the companies it acquires, and puts our entire economic system at risk. The authors unmask the small group of celebrated Wall Street financiers who use excessive debt and dubious practices to undermine our economy while enriching themselves.

Private equity relies on debt- and lots of it. Morgenson and Rosner show how companies absorbed by private equity have worse outcomes for everyone but the financiers: patients at private equity-owned nursing homes are more likely to die; companies owned by private equity are more likely to go bankrupt; healthcare costs are higher at private equity-owned operations; and workers at private equity-owned companies are more likely to have their benefits and pensions slashed or lose their jobs. One thing is clear -- you're worse off because of private equity.

These Are the Plunderers exposes the greed and pillaging in private equity, revealing the many ways these have bled our economies and loaded companies with debt.

Gretchen Morgenson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and two-time Gerald Loeb award-winner, whose work has been called "trenchant and incisive." Her first book with Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment, spent three months on the New York Times bestseller list, was named a "Best Book of the Year" by The Economist and was a Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year. She is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.

Joshua Rosner is a partner at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher and Co. and advises global policy-makers and institutional investors on housing and mortgage-finance issues. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Reckless Endangerment with Gretchen Morgenson.