BX valuation

BX valuation is really nuts. Bubblevision said it's PE was 18x and $40 billion. Lehmann is valued at 11x and $42 billion; Goldman, Sachs is 10x and $92 billion; Merrill Lynch is $11x and 76 billion. Those firms have real businesses and real assets. What are the assets of BX? Investors are getting the MANAGEMENT COMPANY - not pieces of the portfolio. No assets. Just the hope that the people there can do it again. And those people walk out the door every evening. Insanity.

All the press coverage is mostly infatuation with billionaires getting "made".

Private equity profits go to zero when the stock market gets to fair value and the butter-up takeovers don't work. I think "investors" in BX will be hurt over time.

PS: I just heard Peter Peterson's revisionism (or delusion) on Bubblevision that he started BX with Schwarzman when they had $50,000 net worth. What crap! He was a rich investment banker from Lehmann Brothers - their CEO in fact. It's incredible that he's trying to create such a false impression. Sheesh.