History does not record whether Grigori Rasputin, the hardy monk whose misguided ideas about statecraft reputedly helped seal the fate of the Romanov empire, believed in transmigration of the human soul. But if he did, we can guess how he would have wanted his spirit to be revived: as a seemingly impossible-to-kill, multibillion-dollar giveaway for private equity that ranks among the most widely derided clauses of the US tax code.
Congressional Democrats promised this week to kill the tax break that allows investment firms and their executives to receive millions of dollars a year while paying a lower rate of tax than rank-and-file employees.
The subsidy has few defenders even inside the gilded circle. Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager, on Thursday called the handout “an embarrassment”. Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire former investment banker and sometime US presidential hopeful, told an interviewer some years ago that his friends in the private equity industry “think this is such a joke, even they can’t keep a straight face”.