IT was Dwight D. Eisenhower who, upon leaving the office of the president in 1961, coined the phrase Iron Triangle and warned against the dangers of a military industrial complex, and the grave implications of the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.
No single company is supposed to illustrate that progression better than the Carlyle Group, a business founded on a tax scheme in 1987 that has grown up to be what its own marketing literature once called a vast interlocking global network.