It is the nature of the financial markets that there are always bears and bulls. Knowing which ones are any good is the hard part. What I think a lot of them have not grasped yet about this problem is that this is going to be slow and unpredictable.

Unlike the computer boom and other industry bubbles, which have collapsed in just a few months, this is going to take years to unwind. The unpredictable parts comes from the fact that private equity have much lower reporting rules and multiple layers of sales and derivatives hides the details. A lot of people are going to discover they have indirect exposure to these problems they didn't even know existed.

The drying up of easy loan money will change a lot things. The huge private buyouts of the past few years is just the most visible part, the low cost and low control loans have driven a lot of activity in the past few years.

This will have some good effects in the long run. Right now it is too easy for hedge funds and the super rich to use private equity to leverage their money. And more importantly, moving more of the market into the transparent parts will make it more fair and more honest.

Jay