DownWithTyranny!: Does Anyone Really Need More Than A Billion Dollars? How About $100 Million? $10 Million?

Although Obama hasn't done much about it-- other than mention it a few times (I mean no indictments, let alone prison terms or firing squads)-- it's clear that he isn't happy that the big hedge fund criminals are making their money, as Paul Krugman quaintly put it Sunday, "in socially destructive ways." These big money interests supported him-- Rahm told them not to worry--in 2008 and now they're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. In fact, according to Krugman, "they go insane, precisely because in their hearts they know that he’s right. And because money talks in politics, this pettiness, this display of ego and hurt vanity, may have disastrous consequences." This year, they're all banking on Romney... big time! He quotes Alec MacGillis' piece in the New Republic about how the hedge fund managers' love for Obama has turned into blind, spitting hatred, all because they can't buy respect with all their billions and he's denying it to them but distancing himself, even slightly, from their toxic sociopathic behavior.

[M]asters of the universe rarely get much guff in their daily routine: “The guy at the top, the name on the door who raises all the money and makes the big decisions: How’s that guy treated? How many times does someone tell that guy that he might not be a good guy, that, you know, you’re kind of a dick? These guys are not used to getting dinged at all.” And it wasn’t just anyone knocking them-- it was the president of the United States, notes Eugene Fama, a legendary finance professor at the University of Chicago and Asness’s former mentor. “Lots of [hedge fund managers] started out poor, and made a huge amount of money, and created thousands and thousands of jobs in the process. They’re used to being the American Dream, and now you have the president who looks at them and sneers at them like they’re bad guys.”

For all the brashness and bravado that goes with their world, it seems the managers are oddly insecure about their purpose. For years, “most people in the financial service sector were viewed with enormous, out-of-the-box respect and adulation,” says Daley. “These guys were on pedestals, and now that pedestal’s gone, and now, in a lot of people’s minds, the industry doesn’t have that glow, and that bothers them, and now they join that with the president and his theoretically bashing the wealthy. They’ve got to blame somebody, and they blame him because he is representative of that group of people who ‘aren’t us.’” Former Official B told me, “Whether it’s [former Fed Chairman Paul] Volcker saying there’s been no financial innovation worth a shit since the ATM or the president saying his thing, they’re hypersensitive.” Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank was more scathing: “They don’t just want us to represent their interest, they want to be told that what they do is very good. They want to be honored for what they do for society. And Obama has hurt their feelings. Raising their taxes is not simply a blow to their income. It is a blow to their psychic income, a failure to recognize the enormous good they do for the world.”

All the most vile hedge fund managers are giving huge pops to Romney. He's part of their world. Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies, Julian Robertson, Jr., of Tiger Management, Paul Singer, head of Elliot Management Corp, John Paulson and Edward Conard, have each funneled at least a million dollars into Romney's very shady Super Pac, Restore Our Future. And remember a few days ago we were talking about Chicago hedge fund sociopath Kenneth Griffin of Citadel Investments? His favorite politician is, predictably, Rahm Emanuel, whose political career he has helped to finance. This year he's writing checks to elect Willard and given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Rove's operations to defeat Democrats. On May 3, 2007 Rahm had persuaded him and his wife to each give $4,600 to Obama... plus another $2,300 each on May 30, 2007-- which was returned as illegal donations-- and Rahm also got $28,500 out of him for the DCCC on May 15th (the same day his wife contributed the exact same amount) and $10,200 for the DSCC on June 20th. This cycle they've shelled out almost a million to defeat Obama and Democrats. If you read the interview about him (linked above) you will have seen he's a spoiled degenerate who should never be trusted with that kind of destructive power-- a walking, breathing example of how society has to protect itself from financial predators by taxing-- heavily-- anything over... $10 million or so. The biggest donors directly to the Romney campaign: