the secret of their sucess.

Executives in private equity firms – such as Mitt Romney of Bain Capital and Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts – tend to be peacocks who think quite highly of themselves.

Fanning their splendid tail feathers, they unabashedly claim to be the ultimate free-enterprise risk takers – worth every dime of the multimillion-dollar paychecks they award themselves each year. Excuse me, but the risks taken by these self-anointed "heroes of the market" are done with other people's money, not their own. But here's a revelation that really ruffles their feathers: They appear to have been gathering their riches not with bold competition, but with old-fashioned collusion.

An antitrust civil lawsuit filed in federal court against 11 of the biggest equity firms includes emails in which they agree not to compete. In 2006, for example. The head of Blackstone sent an email to the co-founder of KKR: "We would much rather work with you guys than against you. Together we can be unstoppable but in opposition we can cost each other a lot of money." The KKR honcho happily emailed back a one-word response: "Agreed."

easy to be bold and brazen when you're using other peoples marbles. so does that make Mitt even more of a fraud? his whole life seems to be one on collusive ventures with fail safe plans.