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> This article is...not good.

I agree. The opening paragraph reeks of picking numbers to fit a narrative. It states that the number of US listed public firms declined from 8000 in 1996 to 4000 today (suggesting but not explicitly claiming that a significant part has been devoured by PE), but leaves out that the valuation of the public companies in that period increased from 5T to 40T.

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I’m not arguing for their suggestion. But if their logic is that this happened because of PE and those PE owning also a big chunk of those public firms, doesn’t your argument proof they are devouring a large part of the economy?

Private equity by definition isn't invested in public firms.

Public firms can be partially owned by PE, hence the phrase "big chunk"

They can be owned by firms called "PE firms", but that's not private equity. Their shares will be treated as public shares, obeying the same rules as anything else. The article is concerned about investments that can't be measured in the public markets or regulated as public investments.

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