Steve Pagliuca

Good to be here.

Well, it's really interesting.

I think that buyout was $5 billion equity and $27 billion debt.

This buyout is much more equity, kind of $30 billion of equity and $20 billion of debt, maybe $35 billion of equity.

So

The markets have changed to that extent that you can't leverage as much, but the EBITDA is a little less.

Very quality sponsors, and J.P.

Morgan is a very quality bank.

So they did the deal because of the great growth in gaming and media and entertainment, and I think it's a very solid company.

I'm less concerned about credit right now in terms of the private credit markets because...

The private lenders actually are very good.

The banks have been very good.

JP Morgan, especially Bank of America, well-run, well-capitalized banks.

And private credit is different than credit from banks because if it does go bad, you only write off the equity from people who put the equity in.

It doesn't have a systemic multiplier effect.

So I'm less concerned about private credit.

What I'm more concerned about is the size of the national debt.

and how much interest we're spending on the national debt.

It's really interesting, if you go back to when I got out of business school, there was a huge sermon drawing about the national debt passing one trillion.

That's in 1982.