Hertz finally started trading Thursday after a rocky road to its public launch. The rent-a-car company has become the poster child for the bad side of private equity when they put in a small stake but load a company up with debt. Ford Motor Co. sold Hertz last December to Clayton Dubilier & Rice Inc., Carlyle Group and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity for $14.4 billion. The three invested only $2.2 billion of their own money in the deal, reports the Daily Deal.

The owners managed to raise $1.3 billion even though the shares sold for only $15, instead of the $16-$18 estimates. That’s still a nice payday. The money will, in fact, repay a loan the private equity firms took out to pay themselves a $1 billion dividend.

The company is still fundamentally strong, despite nearly $14 billion in debt and an interest bill that’s doubled since the restructuring. It must be strong or else the market wouldn’t have bought into it at all. That’s the ultimate sanction, of course, but there’s plenty of room for abuse. Investors aren’t going to rush in and throw money down a sink hole dug by private equity firms. Or at least mostly, they won’t.

And KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary that operates the logistics and a lot more for the Iraq War, has soared on the stock market. It was selling at a 22 percent premium, reports USA Today. Lots of people thought the political baggage of the war, the new Democratic Congress, not to mention its parent which made Vice President Dick Cheney very rich, all seemed likely to drag it down. But not so. Investors expect there’ll be plenty of Pentagon contracts for the foreseeable future. Even under a Democratic administration, KBR will be very well entwined with the military.