Tucker Investigates: What is destroying rural America?

if you spend any time driving around America recently you may have noticed that an awful lot of the country seems to have shriveled up and died take a trip on route 2 in Maine sometime and count the boarded up paper mills and abandoned houses you see we're headed down Route 23 in Michigan or Ohio and consider the empty factories ringed with barbed wire you'll see a lot of them outside the coastal cities scenes like this are everywhere this is your country now shuttered car dealerships next to defunct restaurants across street from thrift stores and methadone clinics that's America community after community desiccated empty husks with nothing left huge swaths the United States look like that now so what happened well a lot of things happen some of them are complicated and hard to change but one of the big factors in the slow-moving disaster is the utter transformation of the way our leaders think about the American economy during the last Gilded Age 125 years ago America's ruling class may have been ostentatiously rich and they were go to Newport Rhode Island for proof if you like but it was still a recognizably American class tycoons accumulated fortunes but they also felt some obligation to the country around them steel kite tycoon Andrew Carnegie famously built stone libraries around the country for the edification of people beneath him john d rockefeller and many others so-called robber barons set aside huge portions of their wealth and in some cases their property to make this country better Yellowstone Acadia National Park etc maybe most significantly in January of 1914 Henry Ford more than doubled the prevailing factory wage - with then remarkable $5 for an eight-hour day Ford didn't have to do that but his company was succeeding any thought he should some historians trace the creation of the American middle-class to that decision either way it is nearly impossible to imagine a big company doing anything like that today attitudes are just too different your average finance mogul looks at workers merely as cost to be reduced or eliminated entirely private equity isn't building a lot of public libraries these days instead the model is ruthless economic efficiency by a distressed company out sorts the jobs liquidate the valuable sets fire middle-management and once the smoke has cleared dump what remains to the highest bidder often in Asia it's happened around the country it has made a small number of people phenomenally rich one of them is a new york-based hedge fund manager called Paul singer according to forbes has amassed a personal fortune of more than three billion dollars that was singer made that money we've made a lot of it by purchasing sovereign debt from financially distressed countries countries that were in trouble usually at a massive discount once the country's economy regains some stability singer would bombard its government with lawsuits from a massive public relations campaign originating here in Washington sometimes until he made his money back with interest the practice is called vulture capitalism feeding off the carcass of a dying nation in some ways it's not so different from what singer and his firm Elliott management have done in this country and to this country over the past couple of decades Elliott management has been billions by buying large stakes in American companies than firing workers driving up short-term share prices and in some cases taking government bailouts insult to injury Bloomberg News once described singer as quote the world's most feared investor and that tells you a lot no one's even pretending Paul singers tactics are good for anyone but Paul singer and his fund consider the case of Delphi the automotive parts supplier during the last financial crisis a consortium of hedge funds including singers Elliott Management purchased Delphi with singer and the other funds at the helm the company took billions of dollars in government bailouts paid for by you Obama's autos are compared those tactics to extortion but they continued anyway once they had the bailout money the funds moved most of Delphi jobs overseas and then either cut retiree pensions entirely or shifted the cost to taxpayers with later financial commitments at home and sheep factories abroad Delphi stock soared according to investigative reporter Greg Palast of the 29 Delphi plants and operation when the hedge fund started buying Delphi his debt only four we're still operating in the United States by 2012 that means tens of thousands have unionized and white-collar workers lost their jobs Paul singer's hedge fund cashed out for more than a billion dollars see how that works well some countries including the United Kingdom have banned this kind of behavior it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the capitalism we were promised in school it creates nothing it destroys entire cities it couldn't be uglier or more destructive so why is this so allowed in the United States the short answer because people like Paul singer have tremendous influence over our political process singer himself was the second largest donor to the Republican Party in 2016 he's given millions to a super PAC that supports Republican senators you may never have heard of Paul singer which tells you a lot in itself but in Washington he is rock star famous and that may be why he's almost certainly paying a lower effective tax rate than your average fireman just in case you're still wondering if our system is rigged oh yeah it is tonight we want to tell you a little more about how Paul singer does business the story begins in a small town called Sidney Nebraska population 6282 two hours outside Denver's Aiden Sidney is the longtime home of the sporting goods retailer Cabela's which sells fishing and hunting gear in October of 2015 singer's hedge fund disclosed an 11 percent stake in Cabela's and said about pushing the board to sell the company Cabela's management apparently fearing a long and costly fight with singer and now it would look for a buyer now at the time Cabela's was a relatively healthy company it was posting nearly two billion dollars a year in gross profits four billion dollars in revenue there didn't seem to be any immediate need to sell but Cabela's sold anyway after being pushed so one year after singer entered the equation Bass Pro Shops announced the purchase of Cabela's the company's stock price surged within a week literally a week Paul singer cashed out he bought the stock for $38 a share he sold it for 63 dollars a share his hedge fund made at least 90 million dollars up front and likely more over time but in Sidney Nebraska it was a very different story the residents of Sidney did not get rich no just the opposite their community was devastated destroyed the town lost nearly 2,000 jobs a heartbreakingly familiar cascade began people laughed values collapsed and then people couldn't leave they were trapped there one of the last thriving small towns in this country went under we recently sent two producers to Sydney Nebraska to survey the wreckage there and to consider what happened our producers talked to more than a dozen former Cabela's employees almost all of them refused to speak to us on camera fearful of legal retribution from the famously vicious Paul singer but off-camera they told us their story here it is Sydney is it's a great place to be this is Sydney Nebraska a small town two hours outside of Denver for decades according to stone employer our model forever was small-town values big-time opportunities but that motto was turned on its head when Elliott Management Corporation that's a new york-based hedge fund managed by billionaire Paul singer took an ownership stake in Cabela's when we got the news this company is coming in from New York City and buying a huge stake in Cabela's that shakes things up at the time Cabela's was making more than a billion dollars a year but Paul singer's firm sensed it could make a quick buck by driving up the stock price by forcing a merger once thriving town in Sydney lost everything that's how a long time Cabela's employee reacted to news that she was losing her job probably looking at around 2000 jobs 2,000 jobs gone yeah Sydney was devastated American town and just destroyed it Tim O'Connell runs the town's lumberyard before the merger business was great we were just buried you know with with business now his customer base has collapsed how many new homes have been built since Cabela's and Bass Pro merged in the city limits here there's before Paul singer's hedge fund put Cabela's in its sights Sydney was experiencing a building boom we're gonna build a new housing subdivision to meet housing needs all these great things are happening and instead we are working our tails off to try to figure out a way to survive for the people of Sydney it's been a disaster those who want to leave Sydney can't go housing values have collapsed tethering them there for those who want to stay it's almost impossible to find a job how long does it take you to find a new job and as good as your old job as Sydney collapsed Wall Street cashed in Paul singer's hedge fund sold out before the merger was even complete the fund made nearly a hundred million dollars little the Bronco small town I hope all singers is proud of what he did if money is that big of a God - it was pretty sick human being wise we were doing that story were warned repeatedly by people around Washington don't criticize Paul singer that's not a good idea and as that package played I got the following text from a very well-known person in Washington holy smokes I can't believe you're doing this I'm afraid of Paul singer we'll see what happens meanwhile Ben Sasse and this may point to the point the texture was making Ben Sasse is the US Senator represents the state of Nebraska Sidney of course isn't that large but you might think the death of a town in his state would be of concern to Ben Sasse again u.s. senator from Nebraska but so far doesn't seem like he's ever commented on what's happened to Sidney we looked hard then we called Sasa's office to see if they could point to a time where he commented on the destruction of Sidney or simply supply a statement to us about what happened there but Ben sasses office didn't even respond to our producers huh that's odd but then here's one possible explanation for that during his Senate run Ben Sasse received the largest possible donation from Paul singer

Channel: Fox News

Views: 3,671,310

Keywords: fox news channel, fox news, fox, news, tucker carlson, tucker carlson tonight, tucker, tucker monologue, rural america, hedge funds, wall street, wall street main street, us news, americans, us economy, what is hedge fund, current events, top stories, fox news opinion, fox news voices, tuckers thoughts, sidnet nebraska

Id: IdwH066g5lQ

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Timothyjoh]

This is the real non partisan reporting we consistently need.

[u/ohchristworld]

Paul Singer is just one of several hedge fund managers ripping this country apart for their own personal gain. Tucker is right. What they do isn’t capitalism.

[u/draino_soup1]

Apparently trump watches tucker a lot and is influenced by him as well. Hopefully something can be done to reopen these factories and shopping centers

[u/SailorAground]

Paul Singer? There's a trend here. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman)#Early_Life

[u/pumpjackORGASM]

Damn.