Welcome back to the Deep Dive. It is Friday,
February 6th, 2026. It is. Today, we are looking
at a figure who, well, he's not just a person,
really. He's more like a gravitational force.
That's a good way to put it. A center of gravity
for money and power. Exactly. We are examining
a figure who, you could argue, has done more
to reshape the physical, financial, and political
landscape of the last 40 years than almost anyone
else you might just pass on the street. And it's
a name that... Even if you don't know the man,
you definitely know the name. You see it chiseled
into the marble of our most hallowed public libraries.
Oh, yeah. It's engraved into the foundations
of Ivy League universities. And as of just a
few months ago, it's now intimately tied to the
very architecture of the White House itself.
We are talking, of course, about Stephen A. Schwarzman,
the co -founder of Blackstone, a man worth upwards
of $40 billion. Though, I mean, frankly, those
net worth estimates feel like they change by
the hour with him. They really do. And he's a
figure who sits at this incredibly complex intersection
of Wall Street money, geopolitical power, and
that kind of high society philanthropy that gets
your name on buildings. And the timing for this
deep dive really couldn't be better. We have
a massive stack of sources here. I mean, a comprehensive
biography, financial reports, a whole slew of
news clippings leading right up to the end of
2025. Right. And the reason we're talking about
him today is that he's having a bit of a moment.
Again. It seems like he's always having a moment.
A moment is putting it so lightly. I mean, just
look at the notes here. October 2025. So just
a few months back, he was named as the primary
donor for a new 90 ,000 square foot ballroom
at the White House. Literal ballroom. A ballroom
in the People's House. The state ballroom expansion.
Exactly. And it's not a small project. It's a
massive undertaking. And then you fast forward
barely a month and he's at a red carpet dinner
with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. It just
feels like every time. you pull a thread in the
tapestry of global power right now. You find
Stephen Schwartzman holding the needle. Yes,
that is the perfect image to start with. And
the mission for this deep dive is really to look
at that tapestry. We want to understand what
it takes, which not coincidentally is the title
of his memoir, to build an empire where you control
over a trillion dollars in assets. A trillion
with a T. I just want to pause on that for a
second because that number is so big it becomes
abstract. You can't even picture it. It is completely
abstract. To put it in perspective for you, $1
.1 trillion is larger than the entire GDP of
Saudi Arabia. Wow. It's larger than the GDP of
Switzerland. When you control that much capital,
you aren't just a business owner anymore. You
are, for all intents and purposes, a sovereign
economic entity. And with that comes, well...
Friction. We need to explore the controversies
that inevitably follow. Because when one man
has the power to shape economies, to direct the
future of AI research at universities, and even
change the layout of the president's home. It
raises some massive questions. Huge questions
about influence, democracy, legacy, everything.
Absolutely. We need to analyze that intersection
of private equity, which is his engine. It's
the source of all the power in public policy.
How does he navigate between making money and
making history? Because as we'll see for Schwarzman,
those two things are often the exact same transaction.
OK, let's do it. Let's unpack this. And to understand
the man who buys ballrooms for the White House,
I think we have to go back to where it all started.
Because the origin story here, specifically one
story from when he was just 14 years old, is
honestly the most on -the -nose foreshadowing
I think I've ever read. It feels like it was
written by a screenwriter, but it actually happened.
It really is. It's almost too perfect. So let's
set the scene. Schwarzman is born in 1947, grows
up in a Jewish family in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania.
It's a... Comfortable suburban upbringing. And
his father, Joseph, owned a dry goods store.
Right. A linen and curtain store specifically.
And his dad was a Wharton grad. Right. So there's
already a business lineage there. It's not like
he came from nothing. Right. But the key detail
is that his father was very content with a comfortable
middle class life. He had his one store. He had
his family. He was happy. He had opportunities
to expand, to open more stores. And he turned
them down. He didn't have that. Hunger. He didn't.
And Stephen, even as a kid, could not understand
that. He looked at the store and saw limits.
He looked at the world and saw opportunities
to expand. And this comes out in a lawn mowing
business. He starts at age 14. This is my favorite
part. It's so telling. So most kids start a lawn
mowing business and what do they do? They get
sweaty. They push the mower. They get grass stains
on their sneakers. They trade their time for
five bucks. Not Stephen Schwartzman. No. He realizes
very, very quickly that pushing a mower is a
bottleneck. It's inefficient. You can only push
one mower at a time. Your labor is the limiting
factor. So what does he do? He recruits his younger
twin brothers, Mark and Warren. Who were significantly
younger, which gave him a bit of built -in authority,
I'm sure. Of course. He pays them to do the actual
mowing, the physical labor. Meanwhile, Stephen
focuses entirely on client acquisition. He goes
door to door, selling the service, getting the
contracts, managing the books. His brothers are
the ones doing the manual labor. And we have
to pause there. We have to really look at the
economics of what a 14 -year -old just did. Because
that isn't just a smart kid move. That is the
entire private equity model in miniature. How
so? I mean, to me, it just sounds like he's being
a classic older brother bossing his younger brothers
around. Well, sure, on a sibling level, that's
part of it. But economically, what he discovered
was labor arbitrage. He realized that the value
of the service to the client. let's say it's
$10 for a lawn, was higher than the cost of the
labor required to perform it. The money he paid
his brothers. Let's say he paid his brothers
$5. So he pockets the difference. He pockets
the spread. He recognized that the real leverage,
the real way to scale, isn't in doing the work.
It's in structuring the deal. He owned the client
relationship. He owned the brand, Schwarzman
Mowing. His brothers were just the machinery.
It's brilliant, but it's also a little... Cold.
I mean, I do wonder how Mark and Warren felt
about their profit margins. Did they know they
were being arbitraged by their own brother? I'm
sure they were paid a market rate for a kid pushing
a mower. But the surplus value, the profit, went
to the person who organized the capital and the
contract. That's the key lesson. Schwarzman wasn't
a laborer. He was an aggregator of labor. It's
just incredible that he had that instinct before
he could even drive. He understood that you don't
get rich by working, you get rich by management
fees. Precisely. And that separation between
the operator and the owner is the single defining
characteristic of his entire career. So from
there, he's on a very specific track. He goes
to Yale, graduates in the class of 1969. The
elite track. The absolute elite track. And he
wasn't just hitting the books. He was in Skull
and Bones, The Secret Society. Which is practically
a prerequisite for a certain type of American
power broker, isn't it? It's like Hogwarts for
future presidents and Wall Street titans. It
really is. It's a network that lasts a lifetime.
But here's the curveball that I think softens
the image a little. or at least complicates it.
He also founded the Davenport Ballet Society
at Yale. A ballet society. That does not fit
the profile. And I think this is important. We
often caricature these finance titans as just
number crunchers or these ruthless corporate
raiders. But Schwarzman has always had this deep
affinity for high culture, for the arts, for
aesthetics, for presentation. He likes the show.
He loves the show. He understands that power
is... partly about performance. It's about being
seen in the right places with the right things.
The Ballet Society then, the White House ballrooms
now, it shows he cares about the aesthetics of
high society, not just the bank account. So he
wants the world to be beautiful. Provided he
is the one curating it. That's a great point.
So he does Yale, does a brief stint in the Army
Reserve, then it's on to Harvard Business School,
class of 72. He's just ticking every single box
of the American elite establishment. He is. And
his career trajectory reflects that speed and
that pedigree. He starts at Donaldson, Lufkin
and Jenrette, an investment bank. Then he moves
to Lehman Brothers. And listen to this. He becomes
a managing director at Lehman at age 31. 31.
I was still figuring out how to separate my recycling
properly at 31. He's running global M &A. Exactly.
He was the head of global mergers and acquisitions.
And we have to remember the context here. This
is the late 70s, early 80s. The era of the corporate
raider was just starting to heat up. This was
the Wild West of modern finance. He was in the
heart of it. But clearly, working for someone
else, even if it was a giant like Lehman Brothers,
wasn't enough. Because in 1985, he teams up with
his former boss, Peter G. Peterson, and they
go out on their own. And they found Blackstone.
And this is the pivot point in the story. They
started with just $400 ,000. It was a boutique
M &A advisory firm initially. Just two guys and
a phone. So they were advising other people on
deals. Correct. But they quickly realized that
advising on deals is nice, but owning the deal
is better. We're back to the lawnmower. Why just
tell the neighbor their grass needs cutting when
you can own the mowing company? Exactly. Why
just advise a company on how to sell itself?
When you can buy the company, fix it up or strip
it down and sell it for a massive profit. That
is the birth of modern private equity for him.
That's the leap. OK, I want to stop here and
get technical for a minute because we throw around
the term private equity or P .E. all the time.
But if I'm listening to this on my commute, I
want to know, how does a machine actually work?
How do you turn a company into a check for Stephen
Schwarzman? That's a great question. We need
to break down the leveraged buyout or LBO. This
is the engine of Blackstone's wealth. It's the
core technology. Okay. Explain it like I'm a
smart 14 -year -old who's good at math. Perfect.
Imagine you want to buy a house that costs a
million dollars, but you only have $200 ,000
in your bank account. What do you do? I go to
the bank and get a mortgage for the other $800
,000. Right. You use leverage. which is just
a fancy word for debt, to buy the asset. Now
imagine you do that, but with a company. Blackstone
finds a company, let's say it's a hotel chain,
that costs a billion dollars. Okay. They put
down maybe $200 million of their own money, or
their investors' money, and then they borrow
the other $800 million from banks. Okay, so now
they own a hotel chain, but they also have this
mountain of debt. Who pays that back? Ah. Here
is the magic trick, and this is where it gets
so controversial. In a house mortgage, you pay
the debt. It's your personal responsibility.
In an LVO, Blackstone often transfers that debt
onto the company they just bought. Wait a minute.
So the hotel chain now has to pay off the loan
that Blackstone used to buy it. Correct. The
company is now saddled with this massive debt
service. To pay it off, they had to become incredibly
efficient very quickly. They might cut staff.
They might sell off on profitable locations.
They might squeeze their suppliers for better
terms. That sounds incredibly risky for the hotel
chain, for its employees. It is existential for
the company. If they can't make the payments,
they go bankrupt. But for Blackstone, their risk
is limited to that initial down payment. If the
company turns around and becomes more profitable,
Blackstone sells it five or seven years later
for, say, $2 billion. They pay off the original
debt, and they keep the massive profit on their
small initial investment. The returns are enormous.
So they're essentially flipping houses, but the
house has to pay its own mortgage while it's
being renovated, and all the people living in
the house might get kicked out to make it work.
That is a perfect analogy. And when it works,
the returns are astronomical. That is how you
get from $400 ,000 to $1 .1 trillion in assets
under management. And speaking of returns, we
have to talk about how Schwarzman himself gets
paid. Because it's not just a salary, right?
The numbers we see are way too big for a salary.
Oh, no. The salary is a rounding error. The real
money comes from something called carried interest.
This is the tax thing that everyone in Washington
fights about constantly. It is. It's the holy
grail. Typically, a private equity firm takes
a 20 % cut of the profits they make for their
investors. That's the carry. Now, normally, if
you or I get a big bonus at work, we pay income
tax on it, which can be nearly 40 % at the top
bracket. Right. But because of the way the tax
code is written, this carry is treated as investment
income, not salary. Even though it's literally
money they earn for doing the job of managing
the money. Exactly. Long -term investment income
capital gains is taxed at a much, much lower
rate, usually around 20%. So he's keeping almost
double what a high -salaried employee would keep
on the same amount of earnings. That's it. This
tax treatment is one of the main reasons the
ultra -wealthy in finance are so much wealthier
than the ultra -wealthy in other industries.
It's a massive built -in advantage. And looking
at the numbers here, it clearly works for him.
The IPO in 2007 seems like a huge moment. That's
when Blackstone went public. It was the peak.
June 2007. I mean, the timing was just incredible.
Right before the global financial crisis really
took hold. Right before the floor fell out. Completely.
Blackstone goes public. Schwarzman sold a portion
of his stake and personally pocketed $684 million
in cash. Wow. Just from the IPO. And he kept
a stake that was worth over $9 billion at the
time. Talk about selling at the top. He cashed
out right before the world melted down. It was
a master stroke of timing. But it also put a
giant target on his back. Because while the rest
of the world was losing their homes in 2008 and
2009, he had just cashed out one of the biggest
paydays in Wall Street history. And the paychecks
didn't stop there. I'm just looking at these
compensation figures from our sources. 2006,
almost $400 million. 2008, the year of the crash,
he gets over $700 million. Right. 2017, $786
million. And then even as recently as 2022, he
was the highest paid CEO in the U .S. with $253
million. It's just accumulation on a scale that
separates him from even the normal rich. He isn't
just wealthy. He is a different species of economic
actor. And he has a philosophy that matches that
aggression. There's a quote here from 2007 that
I highlighted because it really just strips away
the polite veneer. Oh, I know the one. This is
the one that always gets quoted. He said, I want
war. Not a series of skirmishes. I always think
about what will kill off the other bidder. What
will kill off the other bidder. Just think about
that language. Kill off. It's so visceral. It
sounds like a line from Game of Thrones, not
the Wall Street Journal. It's not outperform
the other bidder or win the deal. It's kill.
It is. And it contradicts the polished diplomatic
arts patron image he tries to project now. But
you have to understand in the world of private
equity. especially in the 80s and 90s. That was
the mindset. It's a zero -sum game. If I buy
this asset, you don't. If I win, you lose. He
treats business as combat. Which makes his transition
into the world of politics and diplomacy so fascinating.
Because killing off the bitter works in a boardroom,
but it doesn't necessarily work when you're dealing
with presidents and prime ministers. Or maybe
he does. That's the billion dollar question,
isn't it? Let's move to that. Section three,
the kingmaker, because this is where Schwarzman's
story gets really, really complex. OK, so politically,
he's a Republican. That's not a surprise. Not
at all. Low taxes, low spending, less regulation.
It's the classic wish list for a man with his
bank account. But he identifies as a pragmatist.
A center right guy. He's donated to Mitt Romney.
He's donated to Marco Rubio. He even had some
positive things to say about Hillary Clinton
back in 2016. He's not an ideologue in the sense
of a culture warrior. He's an ideologue for capital.
His one core belief is stability for his investments.
If a Democrat offers a stable, predictable environment
for business, he'll work with them. If a Republican
does, great. But then... Enter Donald Trump.
Yes. And this is a relationship that has more
twists and turns than a roller coaster. It's
fascinating. They've been friends for a long
time, right, from the New York social scene.
Decades. They ran in the same Palm Beach and
Manhattan social loops. They know each other
well. So when Trump wins in 2016, Schwartzman
isn't on the outside looking in. He's right there
from day one. He chairs the Strategic and Policy
Forum. He's the one rounding up CEOs like Jamie
Dimon of J .P. Morgan and Bob Iger of Disney
to come advise the new president. And he defended
that involvement really heavily, didn't he? I
remember there was a lot of backlash from academics
and other business leaders. Oh, yeah. And his
argument was basically, look, having influence
is a good thing. Right. If I'm in the room, I
can give sound, rational advice. The classic
adult in the room theory. Exactly. You're better
off with me whispering in his ear than someone
else. But that forum fell apart pretty quickly.
August 2017. After the Charlottesville protests,
CEOs started resigning en masse and Trump disbanded
it before it could collapse entirely. But Schwarzman
didn't cut ties. That's the key part. He didn't
walk away. No, he kept donating. In the 2020
election cycle, he gave $33 .5 million to Republicans.
He was all in. But then came January 6th, and
the sources say he called it an insurrection
and an affront to Democratic values. He did.
He put out a statement. But notice what he didn't
do. He didn't burn the bridge. He condemned the
specific action. But he was very careful not
to excommunicate the leader, Trump himself. He's
a hedge better pun, very much intended. He always
keeps his options open. Well, the bridge looked
a little shaky in 2022. This is the part that
fascinates me. He came out publicly and said
he would not support Trump in the 2024 election.
He called for a new generation of leaders. Right.
That felt like a breakup. That felt like the
entire business establishment with Schwartzman
as its spokesman saying, we are done with the
chaos. We want someone predictable. It did. It
felt like Wall Street was placing a big public
bet on Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley or someone
else, someone who wouldn't tweet the market into
a tailspin at 3 a .m. But and here is the key
to understanding how Stephen Schwartzman operates.
When it became clear that Trump was going to
be the nominee. What did he do in 2024? We reversed
course. Completely backed Trump. He called it
a vote for change. And you just have to ask,
why? What changed? What changed is that the new
generation lost. And Stephen Schwarzman does
not bet on losers. It's not about liking Trump
personally or even agreeing with him ideologically.
It's about recognizing that if Trump is going
to be the president, Stephen Schwarzman needs
to be on the winning team to protect his interests
and his investors' interests. It's pure pragmatism
over principle. And that bet seems to have paid
off, judging by where we are now in our timeline
early 2026, because late 2025 was an incredibly
busy and... influential period for him. It has
paid off massively. Let's just look at the Harvard
dispute in the fall of 2025. This was a huge
story that I think a lot of people missed the
nuance of. Refresh my memory. This was the big
standoff over federal research funding. Right.
So you have the Trump administration fresh into
the second term, and they're threatening to pull
billions in federal research funding from Ivy
League schools over what they call ideological
noncompliance. Basically, a culture war attack
on university endowments and what they saw as
woke curriculum. Exactly. And this would have
decimated Harvard's research budget completely.
And on the other side, you have Harvard, the
ultimate establishment institution. They were
at a total stalemate. The White House wasn't
taking their calls. The academics didn't know
how to speak the administration's language. So
who steps in? The Yale guy. The Yale guy, Stephen
Schwartzman. But he's the perfect intermediary.
He speaks the language of the Ivy League. I mean,
he's got buildings named after him there. And
he speaks the language of Trump and transactional
politics. So how did he fix it? Did he give a
big speech about academic freedom? No, of course
not. According to the reports we have, he went
in and he structured a deal. He treated it like
a merger negotiation. He essentially brokered
a treaty where Harvard agreed to certain administrative
changes, things the White House wanted regarding
curriculum oversight and transparency in exchange
for the funding remaining intact. He treated
the Department of Education and Harvard University
like two companies in a distressed merger. Exactly.
He viewed it as a transaction. He didn't get
emotional about the politics. He just asked,
what does site A need to walk away happy? What
does site B need? How do we clear the market?
To be able to do that, to be the bridge between
the populist executive branch and the intellectual
elite, that is a position of almost unbelievable
power. And then, almost as a victory lap, we
get the ballroom announcement in October 2025.
He's named as the key donor for the massive expansion
of the East Wing. I mean, just think about the
symbolism there. He isn't just visiting the White
House for a meeting. He is physically building
the room where the state dinners will happen
for the next century. He's constructing the stage
upon which American diplomacy is performed. It's
a permanent physical footprint in the seat of
American power. It's the ultimate access. And
that access is what allows him to navigate these
tricky geopolitical situations. Like in November
2025, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman MBS comes
to the White House. This is his first official
U .S. visit since the Khashoggi killing in 2018.
A huge geopolitical moment, a normalization of
relations that was very controversial. Very.
And Schwarzman is there at the red carpet dinner.
Of course he is. Because the Saudi Public Investment
Fund is a massive player in the world of private
equity. They are one of his biggest clients.
Schwarzman has to be there. He's arguably one
of the few people in the world who can seamlessly
move from a boardroom in Riyadh to a ballroom
in D .C. It's interesting, though, because he's
so global. But then in 2025, he was also arguing
that the U .S. tariff situation actually gave
Europe a unique investment advantage. That was
a fascinating bit of economic 4D chess. He was
basically telling his investors, look, the U
.S. is locking down with tariffs. It's becoming
more protectionist. So the smart money should
be flowing to Europe right now. He just plays
all sides of the board. He does because he isn't
loyal to a nation state's policy. He's little
to where capital can flow most efficiently and
generate the highest return. He represents a
layer of global capital that views presidents
and prime ministers as sort of temporary managers.
The money remains. The institutions remain. And
Stephen Schwarzman sees himself as the custodian
of that continuity. Which brings us to the other
way he ensures his continuity, his legacy, putting
his name on literally everything. Section four,
monument building. The edifice complex. Is that
a real term? It is now. It's the desire of the
ultra wealthy to leave a physical legacy that
outlasts their biological life. A building with
your name on it is a form of immortality. So
he signed the giving pledge back in 2020, promising
to give away the majority of his wealth. Great.
But his giving. It usually comes with a chisel
and a stonemason. It does. It's rarely anonymous.
Let's just look at the portfolio of buildings.
The New York Public Library, the main branch
on Fifth Avenue, the one with the iconic lions
out front. It's now officially the Stephen A.
Schwarzman building. That costs for that $100
million. Which is a lot of money, obviously.
An incredible gift to the city. But also, to
have your name on one of the most famous, most
beloved public buildings in New York City forever.
It feels like a bargain. It is a massive bargain.
Think about it. That building will stand for
another 100, 200 years. For $100 million, which
for him is maybe a few months of income, he bought
a specific kind of immortality. Every single
person who walks past 42nd and 5th reads his
name. And then you have the universities. An
empire of Schwarzman -funded buildings. MIT,
$350 million for the Schwarzman College of Computing.
Oxford, $150 million for the Schwarzman Center
for the Humanities. Yale. $150 million for the
Schwarzman Center, a campus hub. What stands
out to me is the mix. He's funding AI and computing
at MIT, the future, the cutting edge, and he's
funding the humanities at Oxford, the past, the
culture, the classics. It's a portfolio approach
to legacy. He wants to own the future of technology
and be the great preserver of Western civilization
at the same time. Exactly. But the most interesting
and by far the most controversial of his philanthropic
projects is the Schwarzman Scholars Program.
The program in China. Yes, a $100 million personal
gift to create a program at Tsinghua University
in Beijing. He explicitly modeled it on the Rhodes
Scholarship at Oxford. The stated goal was to
build a network of future global leaders who
understand China. Which sounds noble on paper.
I mean, building a bridge of understanding between
the East and West, especially now when geopolitical
tensions are so high. It does. But there's a
pretty significant catch. The source material
we have notes that the program has documented
ties to the United Front Work Department. And
you should explain what that is for us. The United
Front is an agency of the Chinese Communist Party,
the CCP. And its job is explicitly to conduct
influence operations abroad, to co -opt foreign
elites and promote the CCP's worldview. So there's
this deep tension. A huge one. Is he fostering
open dialogue and mutual understanding? Or is
he creating a prestigious Western -branded program
that operates under the thumb of the CCP and,
critics would argue, helps to legitimize a regime
that is increasingly authoritarian? And Schwarzman
would probably argue that engagement is always
better than isolation. Of course. I want war,
not skirmishes in business, but engagement and
dialogue in geopolitics. And why? Because a hot
war is bad for business? especially if it's between
nuclear powers. He wants a stable, predictable
China because Blackstone has billions and billions
of dollars invested in Asia. Now, we have to
talk about the one time this monument building
didn't go so well, the Abington High School controversy.
This is his alma mater, a public high school
in Pennsylvania. This is such a telling story
because it shows the limits of what money can
buy. He offered a $25 million donation. Now,
for a public school, that is transformational
money. We were talking new science labs, new
computer labs, a whole new technological wing.
It's a game changer. But there were strings attached.
Heavy strings. He wanted the naming rights, not
just for a stadium. He'd already done that back
in 2004. He wanted the entire school named after
him. Abington Senior High School would cease
to exist. It would become Stephen A. Schwarzman
High School. And the community said, wait a minute.
They revolted. There was a massive public backlash.
Alumni, parents, students, teachers. They felt
that a public institution shouldn't be rebranded
for a billionaire just because he wrote a check.
It blurred the line between charity and privatization.
It felt like he was buying the town's identity.
Which is so different from the NYPL or Yale.
Totally different. Those are private institutions
for the most part. This was a public school funded
by taxpayers. And he backed down. He did. They
eventually reached a new agreement. The school
got to keep the $25 million donation, but the
renaming condition was removed. That has to be
rare for him to lose a negotiation like that.
I think it was a real reality check. You can
buy a ballroom at the White House, apparently,
because that's a transactional environment where
everyone understands the game. But touching a
community's identity, a public school, that's
where people draw the line. It was a fascinating
and very public check on his influence. It really
is. So we have the business empire, the political
influence, the monuments. But then there's the
lifestyle, Section 5. Because you can't have
$40 billion without living a little differently
than the rest of us. Differently is the polite
word, yeah. Let's talk real estate for a second.
He owns the duplex at 740 Park Avenue in Manhattan.
Which was formerly owned by John D. Rockefeller
Jr. Again, he is literally inhabiting the shells
of the previous generation of rubber barons.
He sees himself as the new Rockefeller. And then
there's Miramar in New Court, Rhode Island, one
of the great Gilded Age mansions, bought for
$27 million. And the plan is to turn it into
a museum after he dies. Yes, a monument to his
own taste and his own life. He wants to leave
a Gilded Age mansion behind for posterity. But
it's the resource usage that really gets people
riled up. We need to talk about the water. The
water controversies are where the Bond villain
comparisons really start to gain some traction.
I honestly gasped when I read the details on
the UK incident. So let's set the scene. It's
2025. The UK is in the middle of a severe drought.
A very severe drought. Hosepipe bans are in effect
across the country. People can't water their
gardens or wash their cars. It's a national conservation
effort. And Schwarzman owns Conholt Park, a 2
,500 -acre estate in Wiltshire. And on this estate,
he has a private lake. A man -made ornamental
lake. And it was getting low because of the drought.
So what does he do? He doesn't wait for rain.
He hires a fleet of commercial water tankers.
Like big semi -trucks. Massive industrial tankers.
He had them driving back and forth from Hampshire,
a neighboring county that wasn't under the same
strict restrictions, siphoning water from their
supply to truck it over to Wiltshire to fill
his private lake. He trucked in a lake. While
the locals were watching their vegetable patches
die. I mean, just imagine the visual. You are
a local resident. You're doing your civic duty
by conserving water. And you watch a convoy of
heavy duty trucks rumble past your house day
after day, burning diesel just so a billionaire's
view remains picturesque. It feels like a caricature
of a supervillain. Why do it? Why not just let
the lake level drop for a few months? It's just
a view. Because to a man like Stephen Schwartzman,
a dropping lake level looks like mismanagement.
It looks like a failure of control. His entire
life is built on controlling the environment,
whether it's the financial markets, the political
landscape, or the view from his window. Accepting
the drought means accepting that nature has power
over him. And I don't think he accepts that.
It's the God complex applied to landscaping.
It is. And it backfired spectacularly. The local
water authority, Southern Water. had to step
in and explicitly ban the tankers from taking
the water. It wasn't just a regulatory move.
It was a public shaming. It was society saying,
there are some things you cannot buy. The water
table is not a private asset. But this wasn't
a one -off, right? Earlier, in 2011, he did something
similar in Palm Beach. used 7 .4 million gallons
of water in a single year during a drought. Which
was 70 times the average resident. It just shows
a consistent mindset. Resources are there to
be acquired. If you can pay for the water, why
shouldn't you have it? It's a market -based approach
to nature. Which puts him directly at odds with
the concept of the public good, which views water
as a shared essential resource. And speaking
of things that don't look good... We have to
address the Epstein connection. The source material
is very specific here. His name appears in Jeffrey
Epstein's files 179 times. Right. And we have
to be extremely precise here. Being in the flight
logs or the contact books does not prove a specific
crime. It does not mean he was a co -conspirator.
Still not a conviction. Absolutely not. But the
sheer volume, 179 times, indicates a significant
degree of social and professional overlap. It
wasn't just meeting him once at a fundraiser.
No. It places him firmly in that social circle
of the ultra -wealthy where Epstein operated
for decades. It suggests that Epstein was a part...
of the ecosystem that Schwarzman inhabited. Right.
And it's a stain that no matter how many libraries
you build or universities you fund, it's hard
to scrub out entirely. It lingers. It adds a
deep shadow to the legacy. And then there are
the gaffes, the verbal missteps. We mentioned
the kill the bitter quote, but there was another
one in 2010 that was even worse. This one actually
made me cringe when I read it. The infamous war
analogy. Yeah. He was talking about President
Obama's plan to raise taxes on carried interest,
that tax loophole we discussed earlier. And he
compared it to, well, can you read the quote?
He said, it's a war. It's like when Hitler invaded
Poland in 1939. Comparing a proposed tax hike
to the invasion of Poland, to the start of World
War II. It was incredibly tone deaf and offensive.
He apologized later profusely, but it revealed
something deep about his psyche. It revealed
how existentially threatened he felt. You have
to understand that carried interest loophole
is the golden goose. It is the fundamental mechanism
of his wealth. Obama threatening that felt to
Schwarzman like an attack on his entire way of
life. So his brain went to the most extreme hyperbolic
metaphor possible. Right. It showed a shocking
lack of perspective. But here is the ultimate
irony. Two years later, in 2012, President Obama
is facing the fiscal cliff budget crisis. He
needs to broker a deal with Republicans. And
who does he call for help? He calls Stephen Schwartzman.
He calls the guy who compared him to Hitler.
And why? Because at the end of the day, money
talks louder than gaffes. Obama needed Wall Street
on board to get a deal done, and Stephen Schwartzman
is Wall Street. That is the recurring theme here,
isn't it? No matter what he says, no matter how
much water he uses, no matter who he supports
politically, the phone keeps ringing. The powerful
keep calling him. Because he has made himself
indispensable. He has woven Blackstone and his
own personal influence into the fabric of the
global economy so tightly that you can't really
pull him out without unraveling the whole thing.
So as we wrap up this deep dive, how do we synthesize
this? We have a man who facilitates cutting edge
AI research and restores beautiful public libraries.
And we have a man who trucks in water for private
lakes and compares tax policy to World War II.
A man who advises Donald Trump, dines with MBS
and helps Barack Obama avoid a financial crisis.
He's all those things at once. He is the ultimate
fixer for the status quo. That's a great way
to put it. He isn't a disruptor, really. He's
a stabilizer. He works with whoever is in power,
be it Trump, Biden, Obama or the CCP, to ensure
that the environment remains favorable for capital
accumulation. He's the ballast in the ship of
state. Exactly. And sometimes that ballast is
ugly. Sometimes it's heavy. Sometimes it feels
deeply unfair. But the ship relies on it. He
embodies the central contradiction of modern
capitalism. It produces incredible wells that
can build universities and cure diseases, but
it also concentrates power in the hands of people
who think they can buy the weather. It's a lot
to process. You know, you look at the Stephen
A. Schwarzman building at the New York Public
Library, and on the surface, it looks like a
simple, generous gift to the city. But after
today, I think I'll look at those engraved letters
a little differently. You should. You should
look at them and ask, what was the trade? What
was the deal? Because with Stephen Schwarzman,
There's always a deal. And here's where it gets
really interesting for you, the listener. We've
talked about the billions, the ballrooms, the
controversies. But here is a final thought to
chew on as we close out. We spend so much of
our time, our energy arguing about red versus
blue, Democrats versus Republicans, the culture
wars on the left versus the culture wars on the
right. Right. But Schwarzman's career suggests
that those distinctions are surprisingly fluid.
Almost irrelevant when you get to the very top
of the pyramid. He moved from potentially supporting
Hillary to funding Trump, from condemning January
6th to backing the GOP again, from warning about
U .S. tariffs to profiting from them by pivoting
to Europe. Exactly. So the provocative thought
is this. In a world of intense political polarization,
is the party of money the only true consistent
political party, the one party that transcends
all others? And if so, are we all just living
in their world, renting space in their ballrooms?
Something to think about the next time you walk
past a building with a billionaire's name on
it. Look deeper. Look for the deal that put it
there. That's it for this week's Deep Dive. Thanks
for listening. Thanks, everyone. Keep asking
questions.