#private credit

[ennovance]

Public refinancings can save companies up to 300 basis points

Private credit’s “golden era” may face strain amid a resurgence in the broadly syndicated loan market, as increased competition drives down returns, according to a report from @MoodysInvSvc

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-05/moody-s-says-private-credit-returns-will-be-pressured-by-banks?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=twitter via @markets #pd #mergers #acquisitions #deals #lbo #mergerarb #fund #investor #IPO #PrivateEquity #buyouts #MandA #PE #investments #MergerArb #VC #credit #loan

[intelisync]

2024 Tokenization Boom: A New Era for Real-World Assets

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As regulatory frameworks evolve and technology advances, tokenization is set to revolutionize the financial industry. Intelisync provides cutting-edge RWA tokenization services to help you navigate and capitalize on this financial Learn more....

[izzystizzys]

As High Marshall Commander, a title foisted on him by the Galaxy’s fakest bitch aka Chancellor Palpatine, Fox theoretically has privileges and authorities like no other clone. In practice, he has a headache and gets ignored more obviously than before.

What he also has is a fancy new function on his personal comm unit modified to broadcast GAR-wide to all commanding officers, up to and including Jedi. It gathers dust next to his own modified button that sees much better use - a private channel to Stone, the only vod that will let Fox bitch at him to his heart’s content without hanging up (Thire) or bitching right back (Thorn).

It’s been a long shift of 72 hours, the maximum Stabby allows him to do without a well-placed hypo to the neck, when Fox finally collapses on his rickety cot in the Command quarters and hits the private comm connection to Stone without looking. He’s already rolling his eyes so hard it tweaks at the migraine that’s been building since hour 18 and heaving a put-upon sigh.

“Everyone is stupid, Stone, and asking to be thrown face-first from the Dome balustrades”, he begins, settling into a low, dead tone of voice to warm to the building monologue. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. “I swear to haran I’m going to wring Amedda’s stringy neck one of these days. I don’t know what magical Force gods his mother pissed off, but they made sure to punish her and the Galaxy at large a hundred times over. He sucks the joy and competence out of every room like a black hole of stupid. I’d call him a has-been, but I trust in the power of nepotism and also just don’t believe he ever was. I swear he’s doing it on purpose and - oh, kriffing Sith-damned hells, you know who’s definitely doing it on purpose?! The kriffing Chancellor, that wrinkly ass-faced ballsack!”

Taking a deep breath, Fox lets that sit in his chest for a moment, indulging in the feeling of bright weightlessness. “I swear he’s trying to keep the war going - no one man can be that incompetent and still draw breath, not even Amedda or Taa. Goddamn Taa - but anyways, kriffing hell, Stone, either the senility isn’t an act or he’s a bad cartoon villain from Dooby Scoo. Yes Sir, sending Senator Amidala to a Seppie-infested planet for negotiations is a great idea after her fourth bomb threat of the week. No Sir, I can’t hear you cackling evilly with Count Dooku under your lame two-credit robe as you’re definitely not colluding with the Republic’s enemies. What, you have a red lightsaber?! Oh, of course I don’t know what that means, I was dropped on the head as a tubie!”

Barely pulling in a harsh breath, Fox continues, palms pressing into his eyeballs hard enough to cause sparks. “And speaking of lightsabers and senile fucks, haran smite my ass off but who the kriff thought it’d be a good idea to give absolute tactical and military authority to the kriffing eldritch space monks! The Force didn’t bless them with the collective good sense it gave to a kriffing rock, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise! Has anyone kriffing read the Theed Convention of Sentient Rights in Wartimes?! NO?!! Well, color me UNSURPRISED, because war crimes ARE NOT! GOOD! BATTLE! TACTICS!!”

“They run around in crop tops, Stone, in crop tops! Oh, the Force provides - WELL I’M GOING TO PROVIDE MY FOOT UP YOUR ASS, AND IT’S GOING TO HURT BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT WEARING KRIFFING ARMOUR!”

“Sure, let’s send the preteens into active warzones under heavy artillery in kriffing party wear! Surely nothing will ever go wrong! And give them commanding positions equivalent to CC-clones, WHO WERE LITERALLY GENETICALLY CREATED FOR IT! WITH A DECADE OF INTENSE TRAINING! LET’S DO THAT, BECAUSE WE’RE ALL KRIFFING STUPID!”

He’s gesturing wildly at the ceiling now, face heating up as his blood boils beneath the surface. “And you know what really gets my lowers in a twist, apart from the preteen commanding officers and blatant kriffing high treason and war profiteering?! Is it the complete lack of recognition? Gratitude? Basic sentient rights?! No, Stone, no, I would take all that in stride if it meant I never had to see Skywalker and Amidala kriffing canoodle right in front of me again, and pretend like it isn’t the galaxy’s worst conflict of interest case in the making!”

“By all levels of Sith-hell, what the kriff is wrong with that woman? You have it all, you could have anyone, and you choose that twatwaffle?! And then they have the gall to lock themselves in a broom closet for twenty minutes straight and have me guard it! ‘Oh yes, Senator, naturally we all go rattling brooms with our good friends! Nothing dodgy happening at all! I definitely believe you were looking for detergent and have used a washing machine before!’ The absolute nerve on those two! And then last week - you’ll never believe this - High General Windu passed by, and I swear he looked like he wanted to throw himself off the roof! I’ve never been less impressed by anyone in my life, and I’m batch-mates with Bly!”

“Speaking of Bly, that little bitchtit - if I have to edit one more, one more kriffing propaganda piece of him staring at General Secura’s bits, I’m going to stab my eye out! And if I have to edit one more of Secura staring at his bits, I’m going to stab the other one out! The only good thing I have to say about them is they’re more subtle than Skywalker and Amidala, which means nothing really. I will never understand that woman - but then she’s worked with Jar Jar Binks for a decade and not had a nervous breakdown, so she either has nerves of steel or is on some good-ass drugs.”

“Girl, your choices. And you know what else is a choice? Kote kriffing roundhouse-kicking heads off droids when he has a perfectly good blaster right there! I don’t know what the Longnecks put in his tube, but I hope to kriff it’s not contagious. I’d say I’m glad he has Kenobi to keep him in check, but that man wouldn’t know common sense if it punched his nose clean off his face. Flirting with General Grievous, ugh. I’d say he can do better, but honestly, they deserve each other.”

“And Wolffe - “, panting, Fox pauses, considering. “Well, Wolffe is an asshole and stupid, and I hate him because he’s stupid and has a stupid face. Also he keeps drunkenly submitting adoption paperwork on General Koon’s behalf - I wish I could say something mean about that, but honestly, his existence is roast enough. Anyways, bitches are trying me today, and by bitches I mean everyone. Commander Fox signing off to go not commit treason, unfortunately.”

Thoroughly powered out, Fox sinks into his hard mattress with a deep sigh. Several seconds of silence reign, and then his comm unit starts blaring in alarm.

Somewhere in the Jedi Temple, Mace Windu is knocked flat on his ass by a gargantuan shatterpoint exploding.

[crimescrimson]

Albert Wesker in Resident Evil Remastered (2002)

[missanthropicprinciple]

Terry-Thomas | selected filmography + PSAs | 1936-1966

Once in a Million 1936

It's Love Again 1936

For Freedom 1940

Under Your Hat 1940

If You Don't Save Paper (PSA) 1948

Copy Book Please (PSA) 1948

A Date with a Dream 1948

The Brass Monkey 1948

Helter Skelter 1949

Melody Club 1949

What's Cooking? (PSA) 1951

Private's Progress 1956

The Green Man 1956

Brothers in Law 1956

Lucky Jim 1957

The Naked Truth 1957

Blue Murder at St Trinian's 1957

Happy Is the Bride 1958

Too Many Crooks 1959

Carlton-Browne of the F.O. 1959

I'm All Right Jack 1959

School for Scoundrels 1960

Make Mine Mink 1960

A Matter of WHO 1961

Bachelor Flat 1962

Kill or Cure 1962

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 1963

How to Murder Your Wife 1965

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines 1965

La Grande Vadrouille 1966

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)  

[mostlysignssomeportents]

At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[ennovance]

Bank Turmoil Is Paving the Way for Even Bigger ‘Shadow Banks’ 

The market for loans from non-bank firms like Apollo and Blackstone is booming. A crisis in regional lenders could accelerate it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/06/business/dealbook/bank-crisis-shadow-banks.html?searchResultPosition=5 #private_equity #privatedebt #privatecredit #debt #loans #Banking #investor #ennovance

[aroace-poly-show]

makes me want to explode whenever i see someone use art in something they’re posting like “idk who the artist is sorry :(“ THEN DONT FUCKING USE IT!!!!!!!

[kiisaes]

“Why is your gay hand, spread gayly over your gay boyfriends gay gapping hole are you in a gay relationship with gay feelings.”

oh u mean this one

[moash]

i find it funny when people cite my own moash theories or meta on my posts as if i’ve never heard of them or thought of that.

[lucydoodlessometimes]

you're in the wind; i'm in the water

nobody's son, nobody's daughter

[alastoredeer]

Aromantic and asexual Alastor icons

Feel free to use, no credit neded.

The first one with logo, second is logo-free.

[randomfoggytiger]

What a difference in the two interviews - Duchovny's in 1997 and Anderson's in 1998.

Duchovny was super arrogant and pretentious, thinking he was the King of Cocada Preta, trying to pass himself off as an intellectual, bored with fame. Winona Ryder never came out to David because she was much more famous at the time.. Thankfully, in the years that followed, he had to tone it down. Less Duchovny, much less…

Anderson, on the other hand, looked like a working mother, working non-stop to support her daughter, zero glamor, a bit depressed, like a middle-aged woman broken by life.

And in none of the interviews did the geniuses who interviewed them talk about Mulder and Scully, who were the soul of the show.

I'm slowly working on a progress-through-Season-8-based-on-the-burnt-out-interviews post, so this was timely. :DD

To be fair, David was suffering. Both of them were. The X-Files was simply a job to DD and GA; and they coped with its insane hours and insane stresses differently. For Gillian, she internally imploded: eating disorders, panic attacks, anxiety so bad she wouldn't wish it on her worst enemy. She was afraid to put a foot wrong because she'd gotten pregnant so early on and could have threatened the longevity of the show; but she kept putting a foot wrong due to a shoot-from-the-hip personality. Then she was a divorced co-parent trying to do everything herself. David, meanwhile, didn't have that stress; but instead of marrying quick to escape the unbearable loneliness (like Gillian did), he tried to escape by getting outward attention... or through porn, joking in Playboy that his favorite pornstar had gotten him through some very, very lonely days. He also outsourced constantly, making connections with other entertainers and etc. to try to establish himself in Hollywood away from the show. Part of that persona-- that he had everything together and was living the dream-- was part and parcel of selling himself to the business for, in turn, more work.

Secondly, DD WAS arrogant. It wasn't until AA that he learned gratitude, per his own words. Until that time, he'd overachieved into such heights of success that he, naturally, developed an ego. But that wasn't enough-- it never is-- and he kept devising other ways to get attention. Per his old interviews, he described being 'shocking' or 'funny' or etc. as a way to keep others' eyes (and attention) on himself. He always feared they'd lose interest in him and walk away, otherwise (still does.)

That mindset, he's stated here and there, was a result of habits he'd formed in his childhood-- the middle child caught in a turbulent divorce: father suddenly gone, mother heartbroken, and older brother and younger sister taking sides. He had to become intermediary for his siblings and shoulder-to-lean-on for his mother. He became his mother's pride and joy: a shy kid who thought he wasn't a looker when he was younger, who transferred to a better school on a scholarship, who was "captain of the basketball team and the baseball team and a straight-A student, and I was in my last year of high school, and I'd applied to four schools–Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown–and I got into all of them." Who was, in short, an over-achiever; and became arrogant because he achieved everything through his own efforts. But he was also a kid who fainted in senior year, breaking his front teeth, because the stress was too much.

And he was also a man who spent long hours overworked on a show he wasn't particularly passionate about. One who spent long, isolated hours alone (in the bathtub) in Vancouver when not working. And one who always had to be "on" when he was out with his friends or spotted by people on the street. Further, no one wanted (wants) to hear the rich and successful complain about the hardships of their success. So, he turned on the charm for attention, instead; and resented having to "sell himself" for people to care about his work. And his performance, on and off screen, earned him fifteen years of public backpatting and"Fox Mulder"ing everywhere he went.

He didn't deal with the stress perfectly, and created his own problems that had to be worked through later on. But Gillian did, as well (per her own words); and they've both owned up to their mistakes and have, seemingly, moved on from the past.

Lastly, there are other interviews where his truer self comes through: those are sadder, pre-marriage; or more stable and happy, post-marriage. Gillian had happy interviews, too; but her life was much more accelerated than his (marriage, pregnancy, divorce on close heels), and thus sounded more burnt out than he was.

I don't like to pit or compare faults because I'm sure they both handled global fame and nonstop work better than a lot of people would have (David was rock-bottom depressed and Gillian was afraid she'd quite literally go insane; but they made it.) And there are always interviews where he looks like a cherub and she a hag, or he an arrogant scumbag and she a hard-done-by saint. Neither were either.

About the Winona Ryder speculation:

Even in interviews from the early days, DD kept personal details close to the chest, not referring to romantic partners as "my girlfriend" unless his significant other had an established public persona (or an upcoming project.) The person he spoke the most about was Tea-- and that was after their marriage, and only during interviews to promote their next tv series or movie. Tea was a talker, and she didn't mind when he talked about her; so, she rubbed off on David for a good chunk of their relationship-- even after the rehab stint-- until their divorce. (Now, she's taken a vow of silence and enforces it strictly with Tim Daly, as stated by both.)

I'm not up-to-date on Winona, but I'm sure the relationship wasn't serious enough for either to really acknowledge it. She looked happy in their picture together; and I don't think she's the type to deny a relationship because it might not be advantageous to her "brand." But what do I know? XDD

Those are my thoughts, anyway~ :DDD

[the-kipsabian]