THE PRIVATE

A $1B bond “fraud” isn’t a footnote … it’s the first crack in a $1.7T shadow banking empire that holds the real leverage of modern capitalism.

EquipmentShare borrowed $1B through Goldman, Wells, Citi, JPMorgan, and Capital One.

Private. Unregistered. No public record of who owns the debt.

Now, amid lawsuits over alleged fraud and misuse of funds … the bonds cratered.

Only the banks know who’s bleeding.

This isn’t an isolated event. It’s a mirror of 2007 … just rewritten in private credit form.

Then: mortgage CDOs.

Now: private bonds quietly warehoused across pension funds, hedge funds, insurers.

Same opacity. Same complacency. Same contagion risk.

The private credit market ballooned 6× since 2010, feeding on zero-rate distortion.

Now it’s bigger than U.S. junk bonds … and completely unregulated.

No SEC filings. No liquidity. No mark-to-market.

A trillion dollars priced on hope, collateralized by trust.

When trust fails, the math collapses.

If even 1% of this market defaults, it’s a $17B shockwave … equivalent to 15 regional bank failures.

If 5% fails, contagion reaches pensions and sovereign wealth funds.

The domino chain runs through the same giants underwriting it.

Bloomberg called it “isolated.” It isn’t.

It’s the quiet unwind of the post-QE illusion … the moment shadow finance becomes visible in daylight.

Every crisis begins as “an isolated event.”

The difference this time is that the isolation is the system itself.