Don’t blame it on the endless shrimp.

Recently, Red Lobster declared bankruptcy, and even though it’s no laughing matter, the jokes practically wrote themselves — how could a company that offers endless shrimp NOT run out of money?

But if you look right beneath the surface, you’ll see Red Lobster’s real downfall wasn’t endless shrimp — it was private equity’s endless greed.

You see, a private equity firm bought Red Lobster in 2014, and did their thing: Looted profits, loaded Red Lobster up with debt, and saddled the restaurant chain with extra real-estate costs — following a model that reaps rewards for private equity owners but leaves communities, workers, and customers holding the bag.

Now, even though Red Lobster is a recent example of this blood-sucking phenomenon, private equity’s harmful effects go far, far beyond the restaurant industry — from retail stores to nursing homes to fisheries to manufactured housing communities to hospital systems (including Steward Health Care in Massachusetts).

Private equity should not be allowed to loot one business after another, and I have introduced the most comprehensive bill to overhaul the private equity industry.

My Stop Wall Street Looting Act would put private investment fund managers on the hook for the companies they control, end looting, empower workers and investors, and safeguard the markets from risky corporate debt.

But it’ll be an uphill battle to overcome the powerful interests who want to preserve a status quo that means big profits for them — even as stores get closed, consumers get cheated, workers get laid off, and pensions get raided.

Say you’re in this fight to stop private equity from ransacking our economy, and sign on as a grassroots co-sponsor of my Stop Wall Street Looting Act.

Here are a few big pieces of what my Stop Wall Street Looting Act would accomplish:

• Fundamentally reform the industry by closing the legal, tax, and regulatory loopholes that allow private equity firms to capture all the rewards of their investments while insulating themselves from risk.
• Require private investment firms, the firm’s general partners, and their insiders to share responsibility for the liabilities of companies under their control — including debt, legal judgments and pension-related obligations — to better align the incentives of private equity firms and the companies they own.
• Ban dividends to investors and the outsourcing of jobs for two years after a firm is acquired — ending the extraction of resources from acquired companies.
• Prevent private equity firms from walking away when a company fails and protect workers by improving rules so workers are more likely to receive severance and pensions in a bankruptcy.
• Require private equity managers to disclose fees, returns, and other information about their funds so that investors can monitor their investments and shop around.
• Reinstate Dodd-Frank provisions that require regulators to address risky leverage.

Big private equity firms have fat profits on the line here, so they’ll do everything they can to block our reforms. That means we can win only if we link arms, raise our voices together, and fight from the heart.

Add your name here to say you support my Stop Wall Street Looting Act, and side by side, we’ll tackle the private equity industry’s abuses.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth