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Notes -
I don't think that private equity is a particularly new thing - it was how Mitt Romney made his money, after all.
My personal belief, which I freely admit has no actual verifiable statistical backing, is that the main reason you're hearing more about them is that the proboscises of parasitic capital are being turned inward. A lot of financial instruments and practices, whatever their legality or the finer points of how they work, essentially functioned as wealth pumps that funneled treasure from various parts of the world to the imperial core. But those wealth pumps develop constituencies and dependents, so they can't just turn off when the flow of lucre begins to slow, and as a result they're forced to target the interior of the empire. These engines of exploitation, which have for years been going into poorer countries and exploiting them for profit, are being forced to turn to the US heartland because that's where the easiest money is. Now, instead of buying hospitals and dramatically raising prices while lowering quality in the global south, they do things like buy Red Lobster and suck out so much capital it dies, or set up cartels in the firefighting equipment manufacturing sector, driving up costs of equipment massively while also simultaneously creating shortages in both repair parts and finished vehicles (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire-truck-roll).
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