Follow the Money

About a year ago, lefty wacko Les Leopold posted an article on that equally lefty wacko HuffPost site purporting that the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2009 made as much as 658,000... wait for it... (for those of you not familiar with these numbers go ahead and guess...)

...hedge fund managers in 2009 made 658,000 what?
average bonus?
annual salary?
per hour?

No way, none of those guesses can be right. It would be ridiculous if during the year in which the efforts of people in this particular industry put 10% of the rest of us out of work, destroyed a much larger percentage of most our retirement accounts, spurred the foreclosure of hundreds of thousands of mortgages, and produced (as in Gross Domestic PRODUCT) pretty close to nothing, they made money reflected by any of those multiple choices!

Well, if you at least guessed that the $658,000/hour was a wrong choice, you're kind of right. Actually, Les Leopold's numbers suggest that the top ten 2009 hedge fund managers earned $900,000 PER HOUR! Yes you read that correctly. $.9 million PER HOUR.

But the 658,000 figure is even more exhilarating. Leopold's article suggested that the top 25 hedge fund managers in 2009 (combined) earned 658,000 starting teacher SALARIES. (He figured the average starting teacher salary, with benefits, to be about $38,000) Since I know some teachers in Ohio start a little below $25,000, and some a little above it, I'll accept Leopold's figure even if in my experience, it might be a little generous.

Of course some hedge fund professional associations disputed the other figure and I couldn't find any direct sources to back it up, but you can check Leopold's math for yourself (the math appears legit, even if no legit sources for any particular hedge fund manager's salary can seem to be legitimized) at the original post here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/why-are-25-hedge-fund-man_b_531420.html or you can pick up his book, The Looting of America.

Nope, before posting this, I went for some numbers I could find and back up at least as much as my OpEd heroes, Rush, Bill, and Glenn could sink their teeth into. According to Absolute Return magazine's 2010 "Rich List" Appaloosa Management's David Tepper made $4 billion in fees and earnings last year.

To be fair, Mr. Tepper's earnings would only have paid 105,263 new teachers. To get anywhere near Leopold's 2009 claims, he's gonna need some help. Next on AR's list was the evil George Soros who had to scrape by on $3.3 billion. That would only cover the annual salaries of 86,842 new teachers. Leopold was clearly being extremely hyperbolic in his assessment. (by the way, ever notice when someone like Soros uses that money to campaign for something he's an "elitist" who's "buying votes," but when someone like T. Boone Pickens uses it, he's a "patriot" and whatever he spends it on is called "speech?")

Anyhoo, to get anywhere near Leopold's clearly exaggerated 2009 claim we'll have to use AR's numbers for the remaining 23 of the 25 top hedge fund managers, who, together with Tepper and Soros, put up a record $25.3 billion in fees and gains for 2010. (poor guys had to suffer through a down year in 2008, making only half of what they made in the previous record year, 2007...ah the ups and downs of hedge fund mgt.) And so our 2010 tally would only cover 665,789 (and a half) salaries of first year teachers. Wow. Perhaps Leopold wasn't exaggerating.

Maybe we just need another perspective to remind us that we are a capitalist society and that being successful isn't such a bad thing. Let's try this: since at least 10% of America's hourly wage earners were out of work in 2010 as a result of the kinds of things Tepper and Soros do for a living, maybe if we look at their salaries from the hourly perspective it won't hurt so bad.

OK, so there are 40 hrs in the American work week, 52 weeks in a year, so that's 3.3 billion divided by 2080... well, there you go. Soros (the #2 guy) only ended up making $1,586,583.00 per hour in 2010. PER HOUR... $1.5 million PER F-ING HOUR.

I guess it wasn't really comforting to view it that way. Well, at least we know where our nation's priorities lie. And at least we can take comfort in how our culture rewards those who contribute most to the well-lobbied-for corporate tax structure - no wait, I meant to type: those who contribute most to society. Just look at society today. How could we ever ask for more?

Luth,
Out