Steve Schwarzman, chief executive officer of Blackstone Group LP, who recently returned from South Korea, offers a polite answer to the question everyone keeps asking: "It's very colorful."
Henry Kravis, co-founder of KKR & Co. LP, is more blunt: "Nobody can figure it out."
And Don Marron, chairman of Lightyear Capital LLC, captures what amounts to a collective shrug: "What do you say? 'It's a mystery' is what you say."