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."
-Thom
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