Paulson, John
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hedge retaliate massie 7 25 b3
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wa sq news
NYU megadonor John Paulson under fire for Epstein ‘black book’ listing
A congressman pushing for the release of all Epstein files called out the Stern board member, who has donated at least $146 million to the university and remains the namesake of its largest building.
Amanda Chen, News Editor
September 11, 2025
NYU’s $1.2 billion Paulson Center, partially funded by John A. Paulson, is located at 181 Mercer St. and was opened in 2023. (Kevin Wu for WSN)
Major NYU donor and Stern board member John Paulson was named “one of the billionaires” in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact list last week by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, who is spearheading a bill to release all files related to the convicted sex offender.
Paulson, who funds a super PAC “running $2 million of ads” against Massie amid his push to release the Epstein files, is listed in Epstein’s second “black book” that was published by Business Insider in 2021. The full undisclosed list contains names, contact information and addresses of 349 people with suspected affiliation with Epstein — who dropped out of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1974 — dating back to 1997.
Paulson’s name was also publicly listed in the first “black book,” published by former blog site Gawker in 2015 and containing 1,748 other names dating back to 2004. Being listed in the books does not directly indicate criminal activity.
“If John Paulson is in Epstein’s black book, it’s news to him. He never shared a meal or even a drink with Epstein,” a spokesperson for Paulson’s investment firm Paulson & Co. told Newsweek in a statement. “This is a weak attempt to imply a relationship with Epstein that never existed at any level or of any kind.”
The billionaire hedge fund manager graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 1978 and has been one of the university’s most prominent donors since 2009. As of 2023, Paulson gifted at least $146,000,200 to NYU — with more than a decade of yearly donations ranging from $100,000 to $20,200,200. The $1.2 billion John A. Paulson Center opened in 2023 with funds from Paulson’s $100 million gift to the university in 2012 — “among the largest NYU has ever received at its Washington Square Campus.”
Paulson also chairs Stern’s Altman-Paulson Initiative on Credit & Distressed Opportunities advisory board, sits on the school’s executive board and is the namesake of its John A. Paulson Auditorium. He left NYU’s overarching Board of Trustees in 2022, five years after the Student Labor Action Movement condemned his close associations with President Donald Trump.
In April 2024, Paulson held a $50 million fundraiser at his Palm Beach mansion for then-candidate Trump, which Trump called the “biggest night in Fund Raising of ALL TIME” in a Truth Social post. He also hosted a pro-Trump fundraiser in Manhattan with two other billionaires the next month. Although Paulson was floated to be Trump’s treasury secretary, he dropped out due to “complex financial obligations” and pledged to “remain actively involved with the President’s economic team.”
An NYU spokesperson did not respond to request for comment.
*Contact Amanda Chen at achen@nyunews.com.
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AN 7 25
President Donald Trump has openly declared war on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a consistent thorn in his side throughout his second term. Now, the billionaires funding Trump's primary campaign against Massie are being unmasked.
In a Thursday report for Politico, journalist Jessica Piper identified the three Republican megadonors behind the effort to oust Massie out of his northern Kentucky congressional district. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer (known for taking Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on a luxury fishing trip) has so far contributed $1 million to the MAGA KY Political Action Committee (PAC), making him the leading funder of the anti-Massie effort.
In addition to Singer, hedge fund manager John Paulson has ponied up $250,000 to MAGA KY. And a super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson — the widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — has so far donated $750,000 to the effort. Singer, Paulson and Adelson have net worths of $6.2 billion, $3.8 billion and $33.5 billion, respectively.
READ MORE:'You're paying that!' Michael Steele says Trump 'taking money out of Americans' pockets'
The $2 million from Singer, Paulson and Adelson has so far more than paid for the $1.2 million that MAGA KY has spent so far on the 2026 race in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, which Massie has represented since 2012. But the Kentucky Republican has a sizable war chest of his own, with Politico reporting that he ended June with $1.7 million in his campaign account.
Trump singled out Massie after the six-term lawmaker joined all Democrats in voting against his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" this summer. While Democrats opposed the legislation over its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and more than $100 billion in cuts to food stamps, Massie railed against the bill for its gargantuan deficit spending — most of which went toward extending Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
Even though Trump has significant financial resources at his disposal to deploy against Massie, the Kentuckian is not likely to be an easy opponent for the president. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called himself a "big supporter" of Massie, and said he would be campaigning with him across the Bluegrass State in 10 different cities across Massie's district. And anti-Massie Republicans have yet to coalesce around a single challenger. According to Ballotpedia, the only Republican who has formally declared her candidacy in the district is Nicole Lee Ethington, who is a registered nurse with no prior experience in elected office.
"They are wasting millions of dollars against me, and they are gonna lose the [House] majority because of that," Massie told NBC earlier this month.
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ggl ai 7 25
John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund founder, is a prominent donor and fundraiser for Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Key takeaways
- Fundraising: Paulson has hosted multiple fundraising events for Trump, including a dinner at his Palm Beach home in April 2024 that reportedly raised over $50.5 million for Trump's campaign and the Republican Party. In April 2024, Bloomberg reported that Paulson was expected to raise $43 million for Trump through his Florida event.
- Donations: Paulson has contributed significant amounts to Republican candidates and causes. For example, he donated $250,000 to MAGA KY, a super PAC that sought to defeat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.
- Reasons for Support: Paulson has stated that he supports Trump's policies on the economy, energy, immigration, and foreign policy, believing them to be beneficial for the country.
- Relationship with Trump: Paulson has been a top economic advisor to Trump and was even considered by Trump as a potential Treasury Secretary, according to a source briefed on the matter cited by Reuters.
- Broader context: Paulson's fundraising efforts are part of a broader trend of wealthy Republican donors coalescing around Trump, particularly as the election approached and the scramble for campaign funds intensified.
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1119
invert yield curve; homewreckers book 8 mil foreclosures; big % llc shell corps; // CDO; R wolff says banks can't deal with hit 1/2 of Gt Recession , get loans to cover loans; mnuchin etc wilbur recalled gov't baillout after S&L; mnu sez put 1.x billion but pain nothing for indybank and then got subsidies to foreclose?! // get car for free, put some bucks in then pocket total profit 11/8/19
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no talk 7 25
John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He leads Paulson & Co., a New York–based investment management firm he founded in 1994.[1] He has been called "one of the most prominent names in high finance".[2]
He acquired much of his fortune in 2007 when he earned almost $4 billion and was transformed "from an obscure money manager into a financial legend"[3] by using credit default swaps to effectively bet against the U.S. subprime mortgage lending market. In 2010, Paulson earned $4.9 billion.[4] The Forbes real-time tracker estimated his net worth at $3 billion as of January 2023.[1]
Early life and education
Paulson was born on December 14, 1955, in Queens, New York City, the third of four children of Alfred G. Paulson[5][6][7] (1924–2002) and Jacqueline (née Boklan, 1926–2018).[8]
His father was born Alfredo Guillermo Paulsen in Ecuador to a father of half French and half Norwegian descent and an Ecuadorian mother. Alfredo was orphaned at fifteen, and at age sixteen moved to Los Angeles with his younger brother, Alberto. Alfredo enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served and was wounded in Italy during World War II. He later changed his surname from Paulsen to Paulson.[6][8]
John's mother, Jacqueline, was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Romania who had moved to New York City. She met Alfredo while they both attended UCLA. They wed and moved to New York City, where Alfredo worked at Arthur Andersen[8] and later as the CFO at public-relations firm Ruder Finn.[9][10]
After dropping out of college then realizing that his previously chosen career path in sales would not provide a steady and secure cash flow, John Paulson returned to NYU in 1976, where he began to excel in business studies.[8] In 1978, he graduated valedictorian of his class summa cum laude in finance from New York University's College of Business and Public Administration.[11] He went on to Harvard Business School, on a Sidney J. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs scholarship, earning an MBA as a George F. Baker Scholar (top 5 percent of his class) in 1980.[11]
Career
Paulson began his career at Boston Consulting Group in 1980 where he did research, providing advice to companies. Ambitious to work in investment on Wall Street, he left to join Odyssey Partners where he worked with Leon Levy. He moved on to Bear Stearns working in the mergers and acquisitions department, and then to Gruss Partners LP, where he was a general partner.[12]
In 1994, he founded his own hedge fund, Paulson & Co., with $2 million and one employee,[13] located in office space rented from Bear Stearns on the 26th floor of 277 Park Avenue. The firm moved to 57th and Madison in 2001. By 2003, his fund had grown to $300 million in assets.[3]
Paulson and his company specialize in "event-driven" investments—i.e. in mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, proxy contests, etc.—and he has made hundreds of such investments throughout his career. Many of the events involved merger arbitrage—which has been described as waiting "until one company announces that it's buying another, rushing to purchase the target company's shares, shorting the acquirer's stock (unless it's a cash deal), and then earn the differential between the two share prices when the merger closes."[3] An example of a proxy event investment Paulson made was during Yahoo's proxy contest in May 2008, when Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight to try to replace Yahoo's board.[14]
In 2010, he set another hedge fund record by making nearly $5 billion in a single year,[1] primarily investing in the gold sector.[15] However, in 2011, he made losing investments in Bank of America,[1] Citigroup[1] and the fraud-suspected China-based Canadian-listed company, Sino-Forest Corporation.[1] His flagship fund, Paulson Advantage Fund, fell sharply in 2011. Paulson has also become a major investor in gold.[1]
Subprime mortgage crisis
Paulson became world-famous in 2007 by shorting the US housing market, as he foresaw the subprime mortgage crisis and bet against mortgage-backed securities by investing in credit default swaps. Sometimes referred to as the greatest trade in history, Paulson's firm made a fortune and he earned over $4 billion personally on this trade alone.[16]
Paulson worked with Goldman Sachs to provide liquidity for low-performing home loans in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. Together, Paulson and Goldman created the Abacus 2007-AC1 investment vehicle and kept Paulson's bet against the underlying assets hidden from people who purchased it. Paulson escaped indictment because his firm maintained that it was always transparent about its view of the mortgages that had been securitized and that the assets were not without risk. Goldman was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and had to reach a settlement for Abacus.[17][18] On July 15, 2010, Goldman settled out of court, agreeing to pay the SEC and investors US$550 million, including $300 million to the U.S. government and $250 million to investors, one of the largest penalties ever paid by a Wall Street firm.[19]
Political and economic views
Paulson contributed $140,000 to political candidates and parties between 2000 and 2010, 45% of which went to Republicans, 16% to Democrats, and 36% to special interests,[20] including former House Speaker John Boehner.[3]
In 2008, Paulson co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece suggesting an alternative to the Treasury Secretary's plan for stabilizing the markets. The alternative plan included recapitalizing the troubled financial institutions by spending the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to buy their senior preferred stock rather than their "worst assets".[21]
In 2008 while testifying before US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Paulson was asked about the low tax rate on long-term capital gains and carried interest earnings and Paulson replied "I believe our tax situation is fair."[3] In a 2012 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek magazine he expressed displeasure over the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying, "We pay a lot of taxes, especially living in New York—there's an almost 13 percent city and state tax rate. ... Most jurisdictions would want to have successful companies like ours located there. I'm sure if we wanted to go to Singapore, they'd roll out the red carpet to attract us."[3]
In 2011, Paulson donated $1 million to Mitt Romney's Super PAC Restore Our Future.[22] On April 26, 2012, Paulson hosted a fund-raiser at his New York townhouse for Romney's presidential candidacy.[3]
At the 2014 Puerto Rico Investment Summit in San Juan, Paulson stated: "Puerto Rico will become the Singapore of the Caribbean." Paulson was reportedly investing in the territory's municipal debt and real estate developments, and was building a home at a resort.[23]
Donald Trump supporter
Paulson received media attention when he immediately backed Donald Trump after Trump secured the Republican nomination in 2016.[24] Paulson served as one of the top economic advisers to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.[25][26] Paulson had established a relationship with Trump prior to the campaign, with Paulson and other investors having sold the Doral Golf Resort & Spa to Trump in 2012.[27] Together with his spouse, Paulson contributed $831,370 to Trump's 2020 presidential campaign.[28]
Paulson has been a major fundraiser for Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.[29][30] On April 6, 2024, the Trump campaign self-reported a $50.5 million fundraising haul at John Paulson's Palm Beach house.[31] Trump reportedly considered Paulson to become Secretary of the Treasury, but Scott Bessent was chosen instead.[32]
Wealth and philanthropy
Between 2009 and 2011 Paulson made several charitable donations, including $15 million to the Center for Responsible Lending, $20 million to New York University Stern School of Business (auditorium now named after Paulson), $5 million to the Southampton Hospital on Long Island, $15 million to build a children's hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and £2.5 million to the London School of Economics for the John A. Paulson Chair in European Political Economy.[33][34][35]
In October 2012, Paulson donated $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that maintains New York City's Central Park. At the time of the donation, the gift represented the largest monetary donation in the history of New York City's park system.[36] In June 2015, Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the largest gift received in the university's history. Following the donation, the engineering school was renamed the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.[37][38] The next month, he gifted $8.5 million to New York City's largest charter school organization, Success Academy, to change public education and open up middle schools in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn and in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan.[39]
In 2022, New York University announced that Paulson had donated $100 million towards the cost of a new building in its Washington Square Campus. The building was named the John A. Paulson Center in recognition of the gift. ^[40]
In 2024, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem awarded Paulson an honorary doctorate in recognition of his extensive philanthropic contributions to Israeli cultural and educational institutions. His support for Israeli initiatives includes a $27 million commitment to establish the Paulson Bar-El Building for Computer Science and Engineering at Hebrew University. Paulson also contributed significantly to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2021 to celebrate the museum's 90th anniversary and has supported the Jerusalem Campus for the Arts.[41]
Personal life
In 2000, Paulson married Jenny Zaharia in an Episcopalian ceremony in Southampton, New York;[42] Jenny was a Romanian immigrant who came to the United States after her brother George, a track star in Romania, defected and moved to Queens.[8] The couple had two daughters[43] and lived most of the year in a 28,500-square-foot Upper East Side townhouse on East 86th Street, bought in 2004 for $14.7 million.[3] Paulson also owned a home in Aspen, Colorado, purchased for $24.5 million in 2010 and an estate in Southampton that he bought for $41 million in 2008.[44][3][45]
In 2017, Paulson and his wife wrote a letter to the elite Manhattan Spence School, threatening to withdraw aid if the school continued its "alarming pattern" of "anti-white indoctrination". In the letter, they stated: "In fact for children of all races, we strongly believe that schools should value and define success in terms of hard work, earned accomplishment, merit, a commitment to academic rigor, and personal integrity."[46]
Paulson filed for divorce in September 2021, but later withdrew his divorce action so that both sides could negotiate out of court and away from the media.[47] In 2022, Zaharia sued Paulson for $1 billion in damages.[48]
In 2024, Paulson was reportedly engaged to be married to 35-year-old clinical dietitian Alina de Almeida.[49][50]
See also
- The Big Short and The Big Short (film) recount many of the events described in Gregory Zuckerman's 2009 book The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
- List of New York University alumni
- List of Harvard University people
References
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new
steve mnu paid 0 for indy bank, and gov't guar lose no money, sold to buddy in same blg (bunch of pluto-crats ) soros, paulsen, wilbur
extensive interview: https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-23-2019/
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-october-21-2019/
aaron glantz homewreckers
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ggl 7 25
[### Donors to Trump allies' anti-Massie super PAC revealed
Politico
https://www.politico.com › 2025/07/31 › congress › ma...](https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/07/31/congress/maga-ky-super-pac-donors-00487931)
17 hours ago — The group, MAGA KY, raised $2 million between its launch in late June and the end of the month: $1 million from Singer; $250,000 from hedge fund ...
[### Republican billionaires rally around Trump for April ...
CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2024/03/19 › politics › republic...](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/politics/republican-billionaires-trump-fundraiser)
Mar 19, 2024 — Hedge fund founder John Paulson is hosting a high-dollar fundraiser next month to benefit Donald Trump's presidential campaign that is ...
[### Trump Fund-Raiser Rakes In More Than $50.5 Million, ...
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/us/politics/trump-fund-raiser-palm-beach.html)
Apr 6, 2024 — The event, hosted at the Palm Beach home of the hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson, follows a concerted effort by the Trump campaign to ...
[### Election 2024: John Paulson Is Raising $43 Million for Trump
Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com › news › articles › election-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-05/election-2024-john-paulson-is-raising-43-million-for-trump)
Apr 5, 2024 — John Paulson, the man famous for a big bet against subprime mortgages at his now-closed hedge fund, is luring other billionaires back into Donald Trump's orbit.
Missing: FUNDER GOP
[### John Paulson
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › John_Paulson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson)
John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He leads Paulson & Co., a New York–based investment management ...
[### How Republican Billionaires Learned to Love Trump Again
The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com › Magazine › Election 2024](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/28/how-republican-billionaires-learned-to-love-trump-again)
Oct 18, 2024 — The former President has successfully won over wealthy figures including Elon Musk, Nelson Peltz, Steve Wynn, Miriam Adelson, ...
[### Trump-Loving Billionaire Threatens to Pull His Money From ...
Vanity Fair
https://www.vanityfair.com › News › john paulson](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-loving-billionaire-john-paulson-threatens-to-pull-money-from-market-if-harris-wins?srsltid=AfmBOoqdXU9fLkJE58XFrPy2pQqVKT7Z7ACDKzh4zX8Mc-qI1fLfoI4a)
Sep 18, 2024 — John Paulson has boldly claimed Trump would be better for the middle class. He did not mention the ex-president's pledge to keep taxes low ...
[### Trump, Term-Limited, Amasses $200 Million War Chest for ...
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/us/politics/maga-inc-trump-fundraising.html)
14 hours ago — The money is meant to beat Democrats, but some Republicans worry it could be used to beat Republicans, too.
[### Billionaire hedge funder John Paulson says he'll yank his ...
New York Post
https://nypost.com › 2024/09/18 › us-news › billionaire...](https://nypost.com/2024/09/18/us-news/billionaire-hedge-fund-manager-john-paulson-says-hell-pull-money-from-market-if-kamala-harris-wins-presidential-election/)
Sep 18, 2024 — Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson has threatened to remove his money from the US markets if Vice President Kamala Harris defeats former President ...
[### The billionaires rallying behind Trump after his conviction
BBC
https://www.bbc.com › news › articles](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckvvlv3lewxo)
Jun 3, 2024 — The Trump campaign has seen upticks in fundraising during pivotal moments of his legal battles.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-05/paradise-lost-as-paulson-s-puerto-rico-bet-is-blown-off-course
Three years ago, John Paulson predicted Puerto Rico would become a tax haven for the wealthy -- the Singapore of the Caribbean. He snapped up high-end hotels and other real estate, betting on what he thought would be an upswing in the island’s economy.
“We believe the Puerto Rican economy is at the cusp of recovery,” the billionaire hedge fund manager said in 2014, announcing the purchase of two San Juan hotels.
Paulson was gambling on a 2012 law that allows U.S. investors to pay little or no taxes if they move to the island. He expected a wave of millionaires and billionaires would help reverse years of shrinking population and sky-high unemployment.
Like a lot of Paulson’s recent bets, that one hasn’t turned out as planned. On Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria slammed into the island, wiping out its power grid and leaving many of its 3.4 million citizens without food, water and medicine. The Category 4 storm arrived just a few months after the commonwealth sought protection from creditors in the largest U.S. municipal insolvency.
Downward Slide
Paulson’s hedge fund firm, Paulson & Co., has itself been on a downward slide. In 2011, it managed $38 billion, about half of which was Paulson’s own fortune built largely on a prescient bet shorting subprime mortgages. Since then assets have tumbled and performance has been hurt by wrong-way bets on gold, U.S. banks and pharmaceutical shares. Paulson now manages about $10 billion, almost 80 percent of it his own money.
A lifelong New Yorker, Paulson considered moving to Puerto Rico in 2013 to take advantage of the tax benefits. He changed his mind citing “media attention,” though last year he said he’s still considering a move to the island.
In September 2013, Paulson took a majority stake in the St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort and the Bahia Beach Resort & Golf Club, buying loans with a face value of $250 million at a discount of as much as 60 percent. The following March, he acquired a majority interest in the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel and the La Concha Renaissance Resort in San Juan for $260 million, including costs to complete construction of the Vanderbilt.
Alberto Baco Bague, Puerto Rico’s secretary of economic development and commerce, said at the time that Paulson planned to invest more than $1 billion on the island. A spokesman for Paulson’s firm declined to comment on how much the billionaire has invested or what impact the hurricane and bankruptcy might have.
Paulson’s firm acquired the 16-story American International Plaza office building in San Juan’s financial district in August 2014 and has bought several parcels of land for future development. He also owns a vacation home at the Bahia Beach resort and an apartment.
Paulson’s early Puerto Rican investments included bonds and a 7.3 percent stake in Popular Inc., the island’s largest bank. He no longer owns either.
‘So Frightening’
Paulson was about to open a new San Juan hotel, the Serafina Beach Hotel, when the storm hit. It’s now slated to start operating at the end of December, according to the spokesman for Paulson’s firm. The Condado Vanderbilt isn’t taking reservations until after Nov. 1, while La Concha will open its books Oct. 15, the spokesman said. The St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, one of the island’s most expensive hotels, is closed and won’t reopen until Dec. 1.
...
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...The reason it’s important to understand this is that the people most responsible for what happened don’t want you to. Take Alan Greenspan, who as chairman of the Federal Reserve during the bubble’s heyday possessed the most economic power of any single human being on earth, and could have punctured it with one strong speech.
In 2010, when Greenspan claimed on Bloomberg TV that “everybody missed it, academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators,” he was specifically asked about the people featured in the book version of The Big Shortwho saw it all coming. Greenspan answered: “You have to ask yourself why would they make that judgment. The problem that you’re raising is a statistical illusion. … If you took 1,000 people and you split them into two and you had them toss coins against each other, when you get down to the last two guys, tell them that they don’t know how to toss coins.”
The second part of what Greenspan said was completely true — that is, correctly calling the timing of a bubble’s collapse is largely luck, and it’s unlikely anyone in The Big Short will be able to do it again as well with anything else.
But for Greenspan, that was also completely irrelevant. As Fed chair, he didn’t need to know precisely when the bubble would deflate, something that was essentially impossible. He only needed to know that it existed, something that could be figured out by anyone with a subscription to *The Economist*.
And this is funny: After Greenspan “missed” the housing bubble and caused the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, he was hired by John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who personally made over $3 billion off of it. As an additional demonstration of Paulson’s gratitude, he also took a tiny fraction of his winnings and endowed the Alan Greenspan Chair in Economics at New York University. Ha ha.
That said, there certainly were people who genuinely had no idea what was going on. In 2005 I interviewed Greg Mankiw, a schmancy Harvard professor who had just finished two years as chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. When I asked whether he believed we were in the middle of a housing bubble, he became extremely agitated by the idea that mere humans could believe they knew more than the all-seeing market.
• The people who shorted the housing market weren’t the good guys
The Big Short does a great job depicting the mixed motives of the characters played by Steve Carell and Christian Bale (and its other stars, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt), but it’s impossible not to root for them as they call bullshit on the entire financial industry. Moreover, in theory people who short markets perform a valuable function, making bubbles less likely by forcing prices of financial securities to stick tighter to their actual value.
But in practice, that’s only true in heavily regulated, publicly traded areas like the stock market. The characters of The Big Short were shorting housing via bespoke insurance from largely unregulated insurers like AIG Financial Products, which weren’t required to have enough money to pay out on any significant claims. Instead, AIG FP’s business model assumed that it would mostly just collect premiums. It was like a fire insurance company that was incredibly profitable as long as nothing ever burned down.
We know what happened to AIG when the fire began: Everyone who’d bought insurance from AIG FP showed up to collect their claims, making all of AIG instantly bankrupt — until the Treasury Department and the Fed joined forces to provide a $182 billion bailout. So all the money pocketed by the protagonists of The Big Short came ultimately from us. Without us, all their cleverly engineered credit default swaps would have been worth as much as a pile of Enron stock.
• For regular people, Wall Street’s nonsense was largely an irrelevant sideshow
First Wall Street exploded in late 2008 like a
. Then everybody you know was laid off and hasn’t been able to find anything that pays as well since. So it certainly seems logical that the first thing caused the second — and that as maddening as the Wall Street bailout was, if things were this bad with it, without it there would have been a second Great Depression.
Except our own great recession actually began in late 2007. And the people telling us Wall Street’s collapse caused the whole economy to fall apart are the same ones who used to tell us that you could never go wrong by investing in real estate. Maybe it would behoove us, like it did the subjects ofThe Big Short, to look more closely at their story.
Dean Baker, mentioned above, probably got more right about the housing bubble and its effect on the real economy than anyone else. He makes a strong case that what mattered to ordinary people was simply that the housing bubble deflated, not the intricacies of how bankers inflated it in the first place and subsequently destroyed themselves.
As Baker explains it, our economic catastrophe was straightforward: At its peak, the housing bubble added $1.2-1.4 trillion in annual private sector demand to the economy, or around 10 percent of GDP. Part of this was extra homes being built employing extra construction workers, and part was that homeowners believed they were richer than they were and hence were more willing to spend money.
There was no easy way for the private sector to replace that demand,whether Wall Street had gotten a well-designed bailout that punished wrongdoers and cut banks down to size, the horribly designed bailout that we did get, or no bailout at all. (Moreover, the high-pressure sales job on the bailout relied on claims that without it we’d all be murdered by something called the commercial paper market. Even Treasury officials from that period have admitted that was almost certainly a fairytale.)
But there was a solution available: The federal government just had to spend a gigantic amount of money to replace that $1.2-1.4 trillion in annual demand. But Obama was never willing to ask Congress for enough, and Congress might never have provided it even if he had. Instead we got $300 billion of stimulus in 2009 and 2010, and then dribbles afterward. It shouldn’t be any surprise that everyone under 30 is still living in their parents’ spare bedroom.
This is the true cost of the housing bubble and Wall Street’s looting of our country. You often hear that the financial crisis destroyed, say, $14 trillion in housing and stock market wealth. This is wrong. By itself, the financial crisis destroyed little wealth. The $8 trillion in extra housing bubble “wealth” never existed in the first place; the crisis simply revealed that reality. And the stock market recovered fairly quickly, because that wealth was (mostly) real.
The actual price we’ve paid is that the U.S. economy has been operating far under capacity for eight years. The total value of the goods and services we could have produced but have not is over $7 trillion. That’s more than enough — about $90,000 for every family of four in the country — and as long as the economy remains depressed, it will keep accumulating, along with millions of broken lives.
Thus the real criminals are exactly who you think they are: Wall Street, plus the Republicans and Democrats who execute their orders. But the biggest crime they committed isn’t their spectacularly creative financial fraud. It’s been their absolute refusal afterward to allow us to use our own government to fix the disaster they created.
...
https://theintercept.com/2015/12/14/go-see-the-big-short-right-now-and-then-read-this/
==
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-new-big-short-hedge-fund-titan-john-paulson-hocks-the-farm/
daviss stockman fwd?
Back in August we noted that John Paulson managed to get himself and his investors involved in two rather dubious “firsts” in 2015: Puerto Rico became the first US commonwealth in history to default, and Greece became the first developed country to default to the IMF.
“[Paulson] is one of a handful of bold hedge fund investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Greece in a wager that the country’s economy would recover after years of economic crisis,” the New York Times wrote late last summer, on the way to explaining why the wealth management arm of Bank of America Merrill Lynch was liquidating its clients’ money from one of Paulson & Company’s funds. “Mr. Paulson is also one of Puerto Rico’s biggest hedge fund investors, betting that the commonwealth will emerge from its own debt crisis,” The Times continued.
Besides Greece and Puerto Rico, Paulson also managed to tie up money inMallinckrodt, which is down sharply since last summer.
Now, amid a client exodus, the billionaire is putting up his own holdings to secure a longstanding line of credit with HSBC. “The billionaire pledged his personal investments in four of his firm’s hedge funds as additional collateral for a credit line Paulson & Co. has had with HSBC Bank USA for at least five years,” Bloomberg reports, adding that “Paulson is using his wealth to back the firm’s borrowings after investment losses and client defections cut assets by more than half from their peak.”
Essentially, Paulson secured the line of credit with management fees as collateral, but with AUM having fallen by a whopping $18 billion over the last five or so years, HSBC apparently wanted some reassurance. Here’s a bit more from Bloomberg:
==-
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/trump_campaign_economic_advisor_took_20160811
Donald Trump Economic Adviser John Paulson Took Billions in Auto Industry Bailout
Posted on Aug 11, 2016
Hedge fund manager and Donald Trump adviser John Paulson made billions in the mortgage market collapse of 2007 and by holding the auto industry hostage for taxpayer money, investigative reporter Greg Palast told The Real News Network.
Paulson “is the guy who made more money than anyone on the planet in a single year, $5 billion,” Palast said. “They say he got that $5 billion by betting against the mortgage market when the mortgage market collapsed. That’s really the wrong way of putting it.He kicked the mortgage market over the cliff and bet that it would crash when it hit the bottom.”
“Most people thought he was going to end up in prison… but now I guess he’s Donald Trump’s economic advisor.”
“And the Times of London,” Palast continued, “hardly a Marxist rag — it’s owned by Murdoch and very right-wing — the Times of London said that JP, John Paulson, should be paraded through the streets of London naked while people throw rotten fruit at him for what he’s done. Just in England. And that was nothing compared to what he’s done in the U.S.”
A transcript of Palast’s remarks follows.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.
Last year on CBS Face the Nation, Donald Trump said: The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around, and they get lucky. Look, they’re energetic, they’re very smart, but a lot of them it’s like they’re paper pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, okay?
Well, today Donald Trump announced his 13 economic advisors, and yeah, most of them are hedge fund guys. Now joining us to talk about this is Greg Palast. Greg joins us from Los Angeles. Greg’s an investigative reporter. You can read his reports at GregPalast.com. He’s the author of all kinds of books, including bestsellers like Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He has a 2016 film coming out: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. Thanks very much for joining us, Greg.
There’s 13 names. One of the names that jumps off the page, I guess one of the bigger heavyweights there, is John Paulson. You’ve been doing some work investigating John Paulson for your books. What can you tell us about him and why he might be supporting Donald Trump?
GREG PALAST: Well, he’s the big heavyweight. His picture is the one that’s put out there. He was the host of Donald Trump’s big fundraiser in New York, which was at Cipriani. I was just at Cipriani. It’s actually in the belly of the stock exchange, with half a dozen monster chandeliers which cost more than the 12 homes on your street, Paul.
So JP, John Paulson, is the guy who made more money than anyone on the planet in a single year, $5 billion. Now, sometimes he put it as, they say he got that $5 billion by betting against the mortgage market when the mortgage market collapsed. That’s really the wrong way of putting it. He kicked the mortgage market over the cliff and bet that it would crash when it hit the bottom. There’s a very big difference, okay?He, in fact, most people thought he was going to end up in prison, except he hired the former chair of the SEC, who wrote up the indictment of Goldman Sachs and JP’s assistant, but not JP himself. So JP skipped the prison time, but now I guess he’s Donald Trump’s economic advisor.
In fact, if you look at his whole list, they have one big thing in common: except for one guy on the whole list, none of them are economists, whereas—I’m not a big Hillary Clinton fan—but she did speak to dozens of economists, Nobel Prize winners including Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and many others, who’ve never given her a dime for her campaigns. In fact, some opposed her election.
There’s no economists on Trump’s whole group. And the rest of them are all his donors. So if you pay enough money you get to run the U.S. economy. That’s a good deal. And you get to set the policy to determine how much you will pay in taxes, et cetera.
So Paulson is the guy who crashed the mortgage market in the U.S., he brought the Royal Bank of Scotland to its knees, where it went bankrupt. And the Times of London, hardly a Marxist rag, it’s owned by Murdoch and very right-wing, the Times of London said that JP, John Paulson, should be paraded through the streets of London naked while people throw rotten fruit at him for what he’s done. Just in England. And that was nothing compared to what he’s done in the U.S.
JAY: Now, Trump—I read this quote from the CBS show, made a big deal about his independence and how he wasn’t taking a dime from these big hedge fund guys. And I mean, everyone knew at the time if he ever actually got nominated, won the nomination, he’d have to go to these big guys to fund the election campaign. To what extent do you think this kind of hypocrisy’s going to affect him?
PALAST: It’s not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy’s when you say one thing and do another. This was a lie that’s been exposed. Donald Trump plays a billionaire on television. There’s no evidence at all that he’s a billionaire that’s credible. He’s got properties worth billions of dollars, but they’re mortgaged up to the hilt, okay, like, 40 Wall Street, the Trump Towers. They’re mortgaged through the eyeballs, as they’ve always been. That’s why Trump’s gone bankrupt four times, because he’s just always on the financial edge.
So he needs a real billionaire, not a TV billionaire, to fund him. So that’s why he went to John Paulson at first, and Paulson held a big fundraiser for him at Cipriani. And I just snuck in there through the back security door to get some photos of the operation. And to host the dinner, as Paulson did, you have to put at least $350,000. And people like Steve Mnuchin, these are people who have put up, like, a nearly half-million dollars each.
JAY: Steve Mnuchin is the chair of this 13-person economic advisory committee.
PALAST: Right. And a former Goldman Sachs—here’s the guy that, all these guys on this committee are, as you say, people that Trump has been urinating on in the public press, saying these guys don’t do anything, they’ve never helped anyone. They don’t know actually how to run an economy. They know how to suck money out of an economy like Paulson, who got a bunch of pension funds in Europe and America and elsewhere, told him that he was selling good mortgage securities, when he himself was betting that those very mortgages would go under.
So basically, he got these guys to buy insurance on mortgages, and he was the secret beneficiary. You and I do that, we go to prison. [Inaud.]
JAY: Greg, this kind of parasitical finance, and most finance sector is parasitical, and there’s plenty of hedge fund guys on Hillary Clinton’s side, as well. Is there a reason why a certain sector of these hedge fund guys, these parasites, if you will, gravitate towards Trump, and other sections seem to gravitate towards Clinton?
PALAST: Well actually, what you have with Clinton is really the commercial banks, like you have JP Morgan, you have CitiBank people like Robert Rubin, Jamie Dimon, who was Chase, the biggest bank in America. Because there’s actually a war between the hedge funds and the commercial banks. For example, the hedge fund guys are trying to destroy our allies like Argentina. They just, you know, they buy old bonds and then they try to bankrupt these guys, and they attack all the attempts to try to work out deals for Greece or other nations in trouble.
This also harms the banks. So there’s, right now, there’s kind of a rumble. It’s kind of like the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story, except it’s commercial versus hedge fund. So the guys who are more invested in commercial banks and straight—and straight investments and bonds, like, for example, Soros, Warren Buffett, a Jamie Dimon, a [Robert]—go with Hillary Clinton. And they’re under attack by the hedge fund billionaires, and those are the guys who are tending now towards Donald Trump.
The only thing that was worrying the hedge fund guys is that Trump was actually joining with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and saying we’re going to close the special loophole that these guys use, Mitt Romney famously used it, called carried interest. But as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, while Trump is going to take, says he’ll take away the special hedge fund billionaires’ special loophole of carried interest, he would knock down their tax rates so far that they wouldn’t need the loophole. The whole point of carried interest is that it drops the tax bracket for your billion-dollar gains. And since Trump would eliminate the higher tax brackets, they don’t need the carried interest.
JAY: He made a big deal about that in Detroit again on Monday in his economic message. But as you say, it doesn’t make that difference, much difference, to the billionaires once you take in all his tax policies.
PALAST: Yes. And in fact, going to Detroit to make his statement was particularly cruel. Because his main founder JP, John Paulson, was the number one guy, vulture—he’s known as a vulture investor—he’s the number one vulture who attacked Delphi corporation, which used to be the old Delco auto parts devision of General Motors.
When the United States government bailed out General Motors—and very few people know this story—the hedge funds, including Paulson, and Paul the vulture [inaud.] the hedge funds took control of Delphi, the Delco auto parts division, refused to give up their auto parts division to the government. And it was a company literally worthless. And they were told, not unless you give us $12.9 billion. And they said, oh, and the Treasury Department and Obama said, what if we don’t give you the $12 billion? And Paulson and his buddies said, well, then we’ll close down the auto parts companies, every single plant we have in the U.S., and General Motors won’t be able to operate for more than 24 hours, or Chrysler will be out of business, too.
Now, they’re already in bankruptcy. They would have been liquidated and lose a million jobs. So then they got their $12 billion, and then they moved—and Paulson, Trump’s guy, moved every single job, every single union job, every one, to China. And out of the U.S. He shut every single union plant in the United States. Paulson moved them to China. And now he’s running Trump’s economic advisory council. Not just his big funder. But he’s the guy who’s going to advise Donald Trump, the guy who says he’s going to stand up to the guys who are going to stop sending jobs overseas. These are the guys that sent the jobs overseas. These are the ones. They are his council of economic advisors.
And while I will say for Hillary, who again I’m not a big fan of, she has some of these creepy guys, too, but none—she doesn’t have any of the guys that actually moved the auto parts industry to China. That’s a Trump specialty. That’s not hypocrisy, that means government for sale...
==
eh
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/5-investors-that-are-both-rich-and-smart.aspx
no link
5 Top Investors Who Profited From The Recession By Ryan C. Fuhrmann, CFA | April 5, 2011 — 2:00 AM EDT
The recommendation to "buy when there's blood in the streets" has been attributed to more than one rich businessman, but is a solid approach to creating substantial wealth. Another oft-quoted citation whose true origins are also debated is that the "market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent," and does indicate that buying when there is panic in the air is much easier said than done.
To cite a final cliché, there are certain difficulties in catching a falling knife, or investing in a stock, bond or other security when its price falling. But there are certain individuals who have a knack for doing so. With that, below are five investors that demonstrated remarkable timing by making big investments during the credit crisis and are well on their way to huge gains as a result.
- Warren Buffett
In October 2008, Warren Buffett published an article in the New York Times Op-Ed section declaring he was buying American stocks during the equity downfall brought on by the credit crisis. His derivation of buying when there is blood in the streets is to "be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."
Mr. Buffett was especially skilled during the credit debacle. His buys included the purchase of $5 billion in perpetual preferred shares in Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) that paid him a 10% interest rate and also included warrants to buy additional Goldman shares. Goldman also had the option to repurchase the securities at a 10% premium, which it recently announced it would do. He did the same with General Electric (NYSE:GE), buying $3 billion in perpetual preferred stock with a 10% interest rate and redeemable in three years at a 10% premium. He also purchased billions in convertible preferred in Swiss Re and Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW), all of which required liquidity to get them through the tumultuous credit crisis. As a result, he has made billions and helped steer these and other American firms through an extremely difficult period. (Find out how he went from selling soft drinks to buying up companies and making billions of dollars. Check out Warren Buffett: The Road To Riches.)
2. John Paulson
Hedge fund manager John Paulson reached fame during the credit crisis for a spectacular bet against the U.S. housing market. This timely bet made his firm, Paulson & Co., an estimated $2.5 billion during the crisis. He quickly switched gears in 2009 to bet on a subsequent recovery and established a multi-billion dollar position in Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and an approximately $100 million position in Goldman Sachs. He also bet big on gold at the time and also invested heavily in Citigroup (NYSE:C), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), and a handful of other financial institutions.
Paulson's 2009 overall hedge fund returns were decent, but he posted huge gains in the big banks he invested in. The fame he earned during the credit crisis also helped bring in billions in additional assets and lucrative investment management fees for him and his firm.
- Jamie Dimon
Though not a true individual investor, Jamie Dimon used fear to his advantage during the credit crisis and has made huge gains for JP Morgan. At the height of the financial crisis, Dimon used the strength of his bank's balance sheet to acquire Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, which were two financial institutions brought to ruins by huge bets on U.S. housing. JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns for $10 a share, or roughly 15% of its value from early March, 2008. In September of that year, it also acquired WaMu. The purchase price was also for a fraction of WaMu's value earlier in the year. Since its lows in March 2009, shares of JP Morgan have almost tripled and have made shareholders and its CEO quite wealthy. (Starting a hedge fund is the new American dream. Find out how you can pull it off. See 7 Hedge Fund Manager Startup Tips.)
- Ben Bernanke
Like Jamie Dimon, Ben Bernanke is not an individual investor, but as the head of the Federal Reserve, he was at the helm during what turned out to be a vital period for the Fed. The Fed's actions were taken to protect the U.S. (and global) financial system from meltdown, but brave action in the face of uncertainty worked out well for the Fed and underlying taxpayers.
A recent article detailed that profits at the Fed came in at $82 billion in 2010. This included roughly $3.5 billion from buying the assets of Bear Stearns, AIG, $45 billion in returns off $1 trillion in mortgage-backed security purchases, and $26 billion from holding government debt. Its balance sheet tripled from an estimated $800 billion in 2007 to absorb a depression in the financial system, but appears to have worked out nicely in terms of profits now that conditions have returned more to normal.
- Carl Icahn
Carl Icahn is another legendary fund investor that has a stellar track record of investing in distressed assets during downturns. His expertise is in buying companies and gambling firms in particular. In the past, he has acquired three Las Vegas gaming properties during financial hardships and sold them at a hefty profit when industry conditions improved.
To prove Icahn knows market peaks and troughs, he sold the three properties in 2007 for approximately $1.3 billion, or many times his original investment. He again started negotiations during the credit crisis and was able to secure the bankrupt Fontainebleau property in Vegas for approximately $155 million, or about 4% of the estimated cost to build the property. Work remains to be done to finish it, but in a few years it is highly likely Icahn will have another huge gain. (Buying up failing investments and turning them around helped to create the "Icahn lift" phenomenon. Check out Carl Icahn's Investing Strategy.)
The Bottom Line
Keeping one's perspective during a time of crisis is a key differentiating factor for the above "investors." JPMorgan and the Fed are certainly large institutions that individual investors can't hope to copy in their own portfolios, but both offer lessons on how to take advantage of the market when it is in a panic. When more normalized conditions return, savvy investors can be left with sizable gains, and those that are able to repeat their earlier successes in subsequent downturns end up rich.
==
ELECTION 2016
Greg Palast's New Film Exposes How Republican Oligarchs Are Crusading to Stop People of Color and the Poor from Voting
'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' showcases political corruption in 2016.
By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet
September 8, 2016
- ...Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court stopped a Florida recount and awarded the White House to George W. Bush in 2000, every presidential election has seen an array of activists, investigative reporters and even candidates predict it will be stolen and sabotaged by scheming operatives using the darkest of political arts.
The 2016 election has witnessed more of this than ever. There’s Donald Trump, suggesting the vote will be rigged, unless of course, he wins. There’s the FBI saying Russians hacked into the state voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois, prompting the federal government and states to launch new voting security squads. There’s longtime civil rights leaders bemoaning the Supreme Court’s 2013 gutting by its conservative majority of the enforcement provisions in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This has sparked many red states to adopt an array of anti-voter laws making it harder for poor people and minorities to register, requiring people to obtain state photo IDs and eliminating options like early voting, weekend voting and same-day registration.
As court fights challenging these anti-democratic tactics play out with eight weeks to go before the election, you can be sure the public and poll workers in affected states will be left confused, facing any number of delays and snafus. And then there’s the fact that America’s voting infrastructure is seriously aging, with computers typicall a dozen years old and running on Windows 2000 or XP, prone to breakdowns, and in some cases hackable.
A new movie and book by Greg Palast, the investigative reporter who first uncovered the way Florida Republicans intentionally purged tens of thousands of voters before the 2000 presidential election (followed by officials in the state’s black belt counties disqualifying more than 100,000 “spoiled” ballots), raises new threats to what we’re told is a democratic process. In The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, Palast, with equal parts humor and indignation, calls the 2016 election “a crime still in progress and a hunt for the guys who will do it.”
Though Palast shrewdly follows up, saying, “I don’t have a clue” as to the shape 2016’s assault on popular democracy will assume, he has some good ideas about where to start looking. His onscreen trek takes viewers on a two-hour journey in which he cleverly shows the pattern that has dominated American presidential elections since 2000. What is different about this Palast film is that he connects dots to explain why this is happening, who is benefiting, how the dirty business is done, and who the likely villains in 2016 are.
Half of the the film contains entertaining scenes of Palast preparing to chase down and ambush elected Republicans like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who built his political career by defending the rights of white people and vilifying immigrants. Kobach now runs an exceptionally flawed interstate computer operation that tries to track down people who are registered to vote in more than one state. His operation, called Interstate Crosscheck, assumes that any two people with the same name—or similar enough sounding names even if a middle initial varies—are readymade voting criminals who need to be purged from voter rolls. That sounds almost comical except this operation is taken seriously in states like Georgia, where the secretary of state hands a list to the attorney general, who in turn hands a list to lowly county officials and then begins the process of targeting and removing legal voters. As Palast’s onscreen data analysts note, a disproportionate number of people with similar sounding names happen to be non-white, which correlates with likely Democratic voters.
Crosscheck’s data is so blurry and the election officials who defend it are so opaque that Palast raises a point that is easily lost in the details and weeds of trying to understand why America’s system of voting isn’t more simple and straightforward. He posits that it is intentionally designed to be sloppy so it victimizes more likely minority and low-income voters. A variation on this political tactic is the intentional complexity many red states are imposing on these very same populations. Newly adopted legal technicalities, such as not having proper state ID, not properly filling out ballots and having ballots that are disqualified for “spoilage,” are wielded by white Republicans who fear an epidemic of double voting, voter fraud and other imagined ballot security nightmares that never seem to materialize on Election Day.
Why don’t Republicans want people of color and poor people voting? That becomes clear as Palast chases after billionaires who made fortunes in 2008’s global financial meltdown, such as hedge fund manager John Paulson and international vulture capitalist John Singer. There is no such thing as a billionaire whose fortune hasn’t left a trail of pain, Palast notes as he visits their victims and gets stone-faced answers when confronting these men at high society gatherings. Palast's point is the only way that billionaires can get away with their obscene profiteering is by taking away the voting rights of the people they prey on.
The film shows how the nation’s most notorious and rapacious libertarians, the Koch brothers of Kansas, are bankrolling many of the front groups and elected Republicans who have shredded voting rights. The Kochs were behind the Texas-based group whose lawsuit successfully gutted the Voting Rights Act. (In Alabama, where that suit was filed, right after the ruling came down in 2013 the state quickly passed a law requiring voters have a new ID that can be obtained at the state motor vehicle agency, but then closed those DMVs across their black belt counties.) The Kochs also bankrolled one of Kobach’s pro-white, anti-immigrant lawsuits in which he personally pocketed tens of thousands of dollars, Palast reports.
...
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/greg-palasts-new-film-exposes-how-republican-oligarchs-are-crusading-stop-people-color
===
John Paulson: A hedge fund billionaire who placed a successful bet on the crash of the housing market, he gave Restore Our Future $1 million. He’s given generously to members of both parties for years, and his firm also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying on Capitol Hill on financial regulatory matters. He was also a major figure in the SEC’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs last year, which the company settled by paying a $550 million fine
rw take:
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-wall-street-bill-lets-crooks-escape/
tpm:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/16/goldman_sachs_fraud/
Goldman Sachs Fraud
By Jon Taplin - April 16, 2010, 11:09AM
Finally the chickens are coming home to roost on the greatest short scam of the last decade. Goldman Sachs is being charged by the SEC with fraud. As I pointed out months ago, this was a scam of epic proportions.
Let's be clear. Goldman and Hedge Fund traders like John Paulson worked hard to package the worst piece of shit grouping of sub-prime CDO's into "synthetic securities" that they knew would default the fastest. They then pushed clueless rating agencies like Moody's into rating them AAA. They then went out and found sucker Pension fund administrators who had an asset allocation model to buy x% mortgage securities every month to (in Blankfein's term) "to source the other side of the transaction" and offered them insurance from equally clueless shops like AIG to make sure they would get paid 100 cents on the dollar when the inevitable default arrived. If this isn't criminal, it sure should be.
"The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", Goldman is going to be brought to the bar of Justice. If there is any justice, John Paulson might actually find himself at Club Fed, unable to enjoy the $12 Billion in profits in what he called The Greatest Trade Ever
---
wiki
John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American hedge fund manager and billionaire[5] who headsPaulson & Co., a New York-based investment management firm he founded in 1994. He has been called "one of the most prominent names in high finance"[6] and "a man who made one of the biggest fortunes in Wall Street history".[7]
His prominence and fortune were made in 2007 when he earned "almost $4 billion" personally and was transformed "from an obscure money manager into a financial legend"[7] by using credit default swaps to effectively bet against the U.S. subprime mortgage lending market. In 2010, Paulson earned $4.9 billion.[8] The Forbes real-time tracker estimated his net worth at $9.8 billion as of June 2016.[9]
Contents
- 1Early life and education
- 2Career
- 3Views
- 4Philanthropy
- 5Political contributions
- 6Political activities
- 7Personal life
- 8See also
- 9References
- 10External links
Early life and education
Paulson was born in 1955 in Queens, New York, the third of four children of Alfredo Guillermo Paulsen[2][10][11] (November 22, 1924 - July 24, 2002) and Jacqueline (née Boklan, born 1926).[12]
His father was born Alfredo Guillermo Paulsen in Ecuador to a father of half French and half Norwegian descent and an Ecuadorian mother. Alfredo was orphaned at fifteen and at age sixteen moved to Los Angeles with his younger brother Alberto. Alfredo enlisted in the US Army where he served and was wounded in Italy duringWorld War II. He later changed his surname from Paulsen to Paulson.[12][10]
John's mother was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Romania who had moved to New York City. Jacqueline met Alfred while they both attendedUCLA. They wed and moved to New York City where Alfred worked at Arthur Andersen[12] and later as the CFO at public relations firm Ruder Finn.[13][14]
Realizing that sales would not provide a steady and secure cash flow, Paulson returned to NYU in 1976 where he began to excel in business studies.[12] In 1978, he graduated valedictorian of his class summa cum laude in finance from New York University's College of Business and Public Administration.[15] He went on to Harvard Business School, on a Sidney J. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs scholarship, earning an MBA as a George F. Baker Scholar (top 5 percent of his class) in 1980.[15]
Career
Paulson began his career at Boston Consulting Group in 1980 where he did research, providing advice to companies. Ambitious to work in investment on Wall Street, he left to join Odyssey Partners where he worked with Leon Levy. He moved on to Bear Stearns working in the mergers and acquisitions department, and then to Gruss Partners LP, where he made partner.
In 1994, he founded his own hedge fund, Paulson & Co., with $2 million and one employee,[16] located in office space rented from Bear Stearns on the 26th floor of 277 Park Avenue. The firm moved to 57th and Madison in 2001. By 2003, his fund had grown to $300 million in assets.[7]
Paulson and his company specialize in "event-driven" investments—i.e. in mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, proxy contests, etc.—and he has made hundreds of such investments throughout his career. Many of the events involved merger arbitrage—which has been described as waiting "until one company announces that it’s buying another, rushing to purchase the target company’s shares, shorting the acquirer’s stock (unless it’s a cash deal), and then earn the differential between the two share prices when the merger closes".[7] An example of proxy event investment Paulson made was during Yahoo’s proxy contest in May 2008, when Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight to try to replace Yahoo's board.[17]
In 2010, he set another hedge fund record by making nearly $5 billion in a single year.[3] However, in 2011, he made losing investments in Bank of America,[3]Citigroup[3] and the fraud-suspected China-based Canadian-listed company, Sino-Forest Corporation.[3] His flagship fund, Paulson Advantage Fund, fell sharply in 2011. Paulson has also become a major investor in gold.[3]
Views
In 2008, Paulson co-wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece suggesting an alternative to the Treasury Secretary's plan for stabilizing the markets, (i.e. recapitalized the troubled financial institutions by spending the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to buy their senior preferred stock rather than their "worst assets").[18]
In 2008 while testifying before US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Paulson was asked about the low tax rate on long-term capital gains andcarried interest earnings and Paulson replied “I believe our tax situation is fair.”[7] In a 2012 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek magazine he expressed displeasure over the Occupy Wall Street movement and protestors who had picketed his townhouse in 2011[7] noting:
“We pay a lot of taxes, especially living in New York—there’s an almost 13 percent city and state tax rate. … Most jurisdictions would want to have successful companies like ours located there. I’m sure if we wanted to go to Singapore, they’d roll out the red carpet to attract us.”[7]
At the 2014 Puerto Rico Investment Summit in San Juan, Paulson stated: “Puerto Rico will become the Singapore of the Caribbean. ... Opportunities to buy real estate here won’t last much longer.” Paulson was reportedly investing the territories municipal debt and real estate developments, and was building a home at a resort. (Puerto Rico's economy had shrunk in five of the past seven fiscal years as of 2014.)[19] In June 2014, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Paulson was "spearheading a drive" to convince other wealthy US citizens to move to Puerto Rico, to avoid paying taxes. (Under the new tax laws on the island, individuals pay no local or US federal capital-gains tax, and no local taxes on dividend or interest income for 20 years.)[20]
Philanthropy
Between 2009 and 2011 Paulson made several charitable donations, including $15 million to the Center for Responsible Lending, $20 million to New York University Stern School of Business, $5 million to the Southampton Hospital on Long Island, $15 million to build a children's hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and £2.5 million to theLondon School of Economics for the John A. Paulson Chair in European Political Economy.[21][22][23] In October 2012, Paulson donated $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that maintains New York City's Central Park. At the time of the donation, the gift represented the largest monetary donation in the history of New York City’s park system. ^[24] In June 2015, Paulson donated $400 million to Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the largest gift received in the university’s history. Following the donation, the engineering school was renamed the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.[25][26] The next month, he gifted $8.5 million to New York City's largest charter school organization, Success Academy to improve public education and open up middle schools in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn and in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan.[27]
Political contributions
Paulson contributed $140,000 to political candidates and parties between 2000 and 2010, 45% of which went to Republicans, 16% to Democrats, and 36% to special interests.[28] Former House Speaker John Boehner in particular received contributions from Paulson and Paulson & Co. employees.[7]
In 2011, Paulson donated $1 million to Mitt Romney's Super PAC Restore Our Future.[29] His name and picture were featured in an episode of the Colbert Report, in a segment mock-honoring the 22 largest Super PAC donors.[30] On April 26, 2012, Paulson hosted a fundraiser at his New York townhouse for the GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.[7]
Political activities
Paulson serves as one of the top economic advisers to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. ^[31][32]
Personal life
In 2000, he married Jenny Zaharia, in an Episcopalian ceremony in Southampton, New York.[33] Jenny was a Romanian immigrant who came to the United States after her brother George, a track star in Romania, defected and moved to Queens.[12] They have two daughters, Giselle and Danielle,[34] and live most of the year in a 28,500-square-foot Upper East Side townhouse on East 86th Street, obtained for $14.7 million in 2004.[7] He also owns a home in Aspen purchased for $24.5 million in 2010 and an estate in Southampton that he bought for $41 million in 2008.[4][7][35] Paulson has an older sister named Theodora Bar-El, an Israeli biologist.[36]
Paulson rarely gives television interviews and told one interviewer, "I avoid the media."[7]
See also
- The Big Short, which also recounts many of the events described in Gregory Zuckerman's 2009 book The Greatest Trade Ever: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
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alleged fraud
The SEC case against Goldman Sachs
In July 2009, the SEC served Goldman Sachs with notice that it intended to file fraud charges against it. ^[30] On April 15, 2010, the SEC followed through and charged Goldman Sachs and Fabrice Tourre, an employee of the bank, with defrauding investors. In addition to the SEC’s civil case, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio has asked the Attorney General for criminal charges as well, arguing "On the face of the SEC filing, criminal fraud on a historic scale seems to have occurred in this instance.” Shareholders are also suing the bank because of its failure to disclose the SEC investigation against it.[31]
The SEC’s case focuses on a particular Goldman Sachs’ product named “Abacus 2007-AC1”. This product enabled Paulson & Co. Inc., a hedge fund headed by John Paulson, to make $1 billion betting against the US mortgage market. Paulson paid Goldman Sachs $15 million to create and market Abacus. The specific rules Goldman Sachs is accused of violating are: 17(a) of the Securities Act 1933, section 10(b) of the Securities Act 1934 and Exchange Act Rule 10b-5. ^[32]
The SEC is claiming Goldman Sachs made “materially misleading statements and omissions” in its marketing of Abacus to investors, failing to inform them that Paulson’s hedge fund had “played a significant role” in choosing the subprime mortgage-backed securities underlying this CDO and that Paulson had an incentive to pick securities that would probably decline in value. Nine months after Abacus 2007-AC1 was sold to investors, 99 percent of the underlying mortgage securities had been downgraded. Abacus investors lost over $1 billion and Paulson made $1 billion from derivative side bets that Abacus would decline . ^[33]
Commenting on the charges, former SEC lawyer Steven Thel says that given their serious nature the SEC would not have launched the case unless it thought it was going to win. Thel stated in an interview with the International Financial Law Review: “This is an example of a bank saying it was client led, but in fact was favouring hedge funds over institutional investors in the most grotesque way. I am sure the Goldman Sachs line will be that they gave all sorts of disclosure. But that boilerplate provision may not be enough.” ^[34]
The potential for conflicts of interest is illustrated by the Abacus deal, since it involved Goldman Sachs structuring a collateralized debt obligation for a hedge fund that wanted to bet against it at the same the bank was responsible for convincing investors to buy this product. In its pitch book to market Abacus to investors, Goldman Sachs touted the reliability of ACA, a firm hired to manage this CDO. Goldman Sachs described ACA as having a “commitment to longterm bondholder and counterparty security - Durability and stability emphasized”. The bank assured investors that “No rated notes in any of ACA’s CDO’s have ever been downgraded.” ^[35]
This marketing of Abacus on the basis of its safety contrasts with the comments in Goldman Sachs employee emails about the dire state of the housing market. In addition, Tourre wrote in an internal March 2007 email that the Abacus portfolio was “selected by ACA/Paulson” which seems to confirm the role Paulson had in selecting the securities making up the deal. ^[36]