Hedge Fund Managers' Outrageous Compensation
By Thom Hartmann A...
CommonDreams.org is reporting on the outrageous compensation Hedge Fund Managers are getting.
New rankings show the top 25 managers had combined earnings of $12.94 billion in 2015.
At the top of the list are Kenneth Griffin of Citadel and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who each took in $1.7 billion.
Simons has the distinction of being the only manager to appear on the list for its entire 15-year history.
Griffin, the New York Times reports, "was the biggest donor to the successful re-election campaign of Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago.
More recently he has poured more than $3.1 million into the failed presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, as well as the Republican National Committee.
Reuters adds, "The higher payday came "despite the fact that roughly half of all hedge funds lost money last year," said Institutional Investor Editor Michael Peltz.
He added that "about half of the 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers used computer-generated investment strategies to produce their investment gains.”
According to Sam Pizzigati, who edits Too Much, the Institute for Policy Study's online weekly newsletter on excess and inequality, "the real enormity of America's annual hedge fund jackpots only comes into focus when we contrast these windfalls to the rewards that go to ordinary Americans.
Kindergarten teachers, for instance.
The 157,800 teachers of America’s little people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us, together make about $8.34 billion a year.”
According to Stephen Lerner, a fellow at Georgetown University's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor, these managers are merely a reflection of our "winner-take-all politics.
Billionaire hedge fund managers have been leveraging huge amounts of investor capital to extract enormous cash payouts for themselves, the ultimate in “winner-take-all” economics.
To squeeze out these payouts, they’ve been pressuring the enterprises they dominate to slash wages, eliminate pension and health benefits, and offshore middle-class jobs.”
Comments
#2
We all support rewarding years of training, ingenuity, and entrepeneurship.
What needs fixing is the vulgar disproportion that has developed in banking,
investing, and upper corporate management.
Democracyatwork.info advocates workers wear two hats.
One for their daily work role, and the other for a seat at the board.
Germany uses a variation on this model with excellent results, and it is
built into German law.
ct
#3
I'll NEVER UNDERSTAND this kind of GREED and SELFISHNESS! What is it with these thugs, that enough is NEVER ENOUGH!
It's WHY we must clean house in Washington, in the House and Senate, because its because many of them have APPROVED this kind of LOOTING of the Working People!
And I'm very afraid, that Hillary Clinton is in bed, with these Thugs whom run and control Wall St, the President, the House and Senate! It's because of BILL CLINTON, why Wall St has run amok .... by he KILLING OFF GLASS STEAGALL!
THIS IS ALL BILL CLINTON'S FAULT, and WHY anyone would want the Clinton's back in the White House, after ALL the DAMAGE they have done to the American Worker's, is just MIND BOGGLING!
#4
I'll NEVER UNDERSTAND this kind of GREED and SELFISHNESS! What is it with these thugs, that enough is NEVER ENOUGH!
It's WHY we must clean house in Washington, in the House and Senate, because its because many of them have APPROVED this kind of LOOTING of the Working People!
And I'm very afraid, that Hillary Clinton is in bed, with these Thugs whom run and control Wall St, the President, the House and Senate! It's because of BILL CLINTON, why Wall St has run amok .... by he KILLING OFF GLASS STEAGALL!
THIS IS ALL BILL CLINTON'S FAULT, and WHY anyone would want the Clinton's back in the White House, after ALL the DAMAGE they have done to the American Worker's, is just MIND BOGGLING!
#5
The Republican Neo-cons are the ones that started the whole mess, and the Clintons simply rode the same Reagan style economic policies band wagon that both parties were involved with. The rich don't like regulations because regulations keep them in line.
The main difference for the Clintons is that they have learned their lessons in economics 101, whereas the Republican Neo-cons have not. Hillary has learned a lot in the past few years, give her a chance to redeem herself. She has already done so where other issues are concerned and I'm sure she will listen to us, whereas the Republicans don't listen or progress in any way, shape or form. The Neo-cons are the fascists of this country, all the Clintons must do is get out of bed with them.
#6
Ken Griffin is also the biggest supporter of Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois who is our Scott Walker.
Johnnie Dohrman, Clinton has only learned how to better to get away with her crimes and wipe her fingerprints off the bodies.
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