Blackstone Co-Founder Peterson On Wealth, McCain, And Fiscal Responsibility

Portfolio:

Peter G. Peterson is a man of parts: leveraged-buyout billionaire, policy wonk, social lion, and--most recently--the patron of an ambitious new foundation (named, like the Washington think tank he chairs, after himself) that aims to alert Americans to the dangers of mushrooming deficits, exploding entitlements, and gluttonous oil addiction.

At 81--rich, privileged, and well-connected beyond his dreams--Pete Peterson is an unlikely Paul Revere. He's the Nebraska-born son of striving Greek immigrants, who studied hard, excelled in business (rising through the ranks of the McCann Erickson advertising agency and then running Bell & Howell), and impressed the likes of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III and former Treasury secretary Douglas Dillon with his public-spirited bent. They sponsored his induction into the American Establishment, and Peterson ended up serving as Richard Nixon's international economics expert, and then Commerce secretary, before running Lehman Brothers for more than a decade. In 1985, Peterson was nearly 60--and ripe for a rewarding retirement--when he and a young financial whiz named Stephen Schwarzman decided to start a small private equity firm, the Blackstone Group, whose name was an amalgam of theirs (schwarz meaning black in German and petros meaning stone in Greek). Now the senior chairman of the hugely successful firm, Peterson received $1.8 billion as a result of Blackstone's initial public offering and plans to pump as much as a billion dollars of his own money into his new foundation. Three weeks ago, he sat down with Portfolio.com for an exclusive interview.

Read the whole story: Portfolio

Comments

[Rule Of Law]

Another Oracle says, beware, beware the exploding entitlements!

They are laying the ground work for the repeal of SS pretty darn good now, aren't they?

[Rule Of Law]

AND, as was just pointed out on another blog--SS and Medicare are Not entitlement programs!

The Neo-Con Republicans, their Democratic enablers, and both their bosses--The Corporate Elites--are very busy right now lumping all those programs together in the public mind in order to destroy every one of them. Another great example of how they play with words to manipulate the unwary.

Their biggest target has always been SS, but this new tactic of calling a program that we all Pay Into with our taxes, an entitlement, is just plain WRONG! We buy it every year with our labor! Then they steal it and cover the debt with IOU's. So tell me who is really on welfare here?

[argeec]

Peterson thinks that a welfare state such as Sweden or Denmark is untenable.
He would prefer the US go back to the way it was before the New Deal.
I guess it's possible to make billions and still be wrong on major issues.

[WIpatriot]

Money don't make you right.

[Rule Of Law]

But having money means never having to say you're sorry.