"I'm not Robert De Niro, but I'm close to a raging bull on private equity," Steve Schwarzman said in a speech at the North American Venture Capital Summit in Quebec City today. "This is a wonderful time to be an investor. In almost every asset class because of this dislocation, you can make phenomenal returns with very little risk … In periods like this, people get scared out of their minds. This kind of environment is tailor-made for making absolute fortunes in the private-equity business." [Bloomberg]