This week, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) announced its inaugural advisory council – a group of aligned academics, attorneys, and activists the group has tapped “to strengthen efforts to hold private equity accountable.” As previously noted, although PESP is nominally a critic of the private equity industry, it is in fact an advocacy group that offers misleading analysis to distort policy debates. The members of PESP’s advisory council appear to be fully aligned with these views.
One member, Eileen Appelbaum, is a co-Director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Last October, CEPR signed onto a letter urging Congress to end arms transfers to Israel. Other co-signers include organizations such as IfNotNow, which openly celebrated the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, lauding the terrorist organization as “freedom fighters.” Likewise, Michelle Sternthal, Director of Government Affairs at Community Catalyst, tweeted shortly after the October 7 attack that IfNotNow was “doing an outstanding job of speaking with rich, moral clarity in a way that resonates.”
Other members also espouse misleading policy views. Samir Sonti, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, is a regular contributor to Jacobin, which Vox has called “a radical” publication. Naturally, Sonti’s reading list published in the New Labor Forum reflects these viewpoints.
Another advisory council member, Monique King-Viehland, a consultant who is the former Executive Director of the LA County Development Authority, embraced debatable viewpoints on housing policy, including the observation that “there can be no housing justice, without reparations.” Setting aside the merits of that viewpoint, misguided housing policies, such as rent control as espoused by PESP, are generally impractical and ultimately harm the most vulnerable. Indeed, when King-Viehland announced her resignation from the agency in 2019, it was noted that “Countywide homelessness has increased more than 32% since 2015 to nearly 59,000 people, with a higher percentage living on the street in tents and cars.”
In sum, PESP’s advisory council choices reflect an organization that prioritizes misleading rhetoric to advance a misguided policy agenda over its purported mission of responsible oversight of financial markets.