The good, and bad, of Schwarzman profile

TheDeal.com executive editor Yvette Kantrow writes about business journalist James B. Stewart‘s profile of billionaire Steve Schwarzman in the latest New Yorker, lauding his attempts to humanize his subject but wondering why he didn’t tackle how his money was made.

Kantrow wrote, “What about private equity, which made Schwarzman’s superluxe lifestyle possible? What are Stewart’s readers supposed to make of that? Is it good for the economy or not? Does it create jobs or destroy them? Improve businesses or sap them? Are ordinary Americans better or worse off because of it?

“These are difficult questions to answer. (Heck, the folks at Davos just issued nearly 200 pages on the topic and still can’t agree on the economic role of private equity.) But it’s hard to have an opinion on Schwarzman without knowing where you stand on these issues.

“Still, we were hoping that Stewart, who earned his Pulitzer for explanatory journalism in the WSJ on the market crash of 1987, would give deconstructing private equity a shot, especially when writing for one of the last bastions of serious long-form journalism. Who knows? Maybe he’s saving that for a book.”

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