I agree with your qualification of LBOs as predatory; I would add that the primary motivator for any turnaround firm or “vulture” fund is pure, distilled, unmitigated greed. Gearing (or leveraging) a company’s balance sheet enables an investor to increase its potential returns while distributing risk to “other people’s money”. But in the final analysis, generally an investor does better when a company survives than when it fails. Healthy companies are rarely pushed purposefully towards liquidation (reorganization and poorly planned repositioning? Certainly - but rarely are companies willfully destroyed) But creating (or sustaining) a meme whereby these investors are by definition destroyers of jobs is politically motivated misdirection.