51–60 of 122 posts
What pisses me off the most about hedge funds is that they are a powerful center of political corruption, as evidenced by the inability of Washington to close the disgusting "carried interest" tax loophole.
What social functions do hedge funds provide, indeed? Renaissance Technologies avoided $6bn in taxes by using derivatives to pretend their ultra-high frequency trading profits were actually long-term capital gains. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-21/renaissance-avoided... Renaissance is one of the biggest and most successful hedge funds of all time. SAC was another of the most successful hedge funds of all time…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to rethink your position on stock buybacks - they're more or less equivalent to dividends, and perfectly harmless.
The claim is that corporations will borrow money and use it to buy back shares. That's actually a nice hack - interest income is favorably treated relative to capital gains, so it's a way to turn a higher tax piece of capital (stock) into a lower tax piece of capital (bonds).
> How did a few asset managers earn more money in a single year than Pierpont Morgan did in his whole life? Ummm, no they don't. $1 in 1913 is around $24 in today's dollars[ http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1913&ye... ]. So JPM's net worth today would be $36 billion making him the 12th richest person person in the world [ http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2014-09-19/aaa ].
CalPERS, the largest pension fund, is pulling out of hedge funds entirely due to weak returns and high fees. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonhartley/2014/09/22/why-calper... What pisses me off the most about hedge funds is that they are a powerful center of political corruption, as evidenced by the inability of Washington to close the disgusting "carried interest" tax loophole.
Hedge funds are not the only people that benefit from carried interest. Real estate and energy investments benefit from it as well. Those industries have far more pull than hedge funds ever will.
What social functions do hedge funds provide, indeed? Renaissance Technologies avoided $6bn in taxes by using derivatives to pretend their ultra-high frequency trading profits were actually long-term capital gains. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-21/renaissance-avoided... Renaissance is one of the biggest and most successful hedge funds of all time. SAC was another of the most successful hedge funds of all time…
You're conflating 'social' with 'moral'. Everything you mentioned is morally questionable, not socially harmful.
> How did a few asset managers earn more money in a single year than Pierpont Morgan did in his whole life? Ummm, no they don't. $1 in 1913 is around $24 in today's dollars[ http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1913&ye... ]. So JPM's net worth today would be $36 billion making him the 12th richest person person in the world [ http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2014-09-19/aaa ].
The $1.5 billion figure given in the article is already in today's dollars.