Toys “R” Us was profitable. Private equity bought it anyway. Then 33,000 workers lost their jobs. In 2005, Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado bought the company in a $6.6 billion leveraged buyout. Here’s the part that matters. They used borrowed money to buy the business, and the company ended up carrying billions in debt. That debt came with interest payments that drained money the business could have used to invest in its stores, inventory, and workers. Meanwhile, Walmart and Amazon kept gaining ground. In 2017, Toys “R” Us filed for bankruptcy. In 2018, it began liquidating its U.S. operations. Thousands of employees were left without jobs, and many received no severance. In 2019, former employee Giovanna De La Rosa testified before Congress about what happened to workers like her. The private equity firms had made the deal. The company and its employees were left to bear the consequences. That’s the part people should pay attention to. The debt was put on the business. The workers paid the price. They didn’t just lose a company. They lost their livelihoods while the people who engineered the deal had far more ways to protect themselves. And that’s why leveraged buyouts deserve scrutiny.