Deep in the heart of the American ethos, the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps is something rarely attainable in reality. Sure, it has happened before, but if you were looking at the likelihood of it happening on a bell-shaped curve, you wouldn't even be able to see the area those few successes represent.
However, for a long time the gap between rich and poor was never terribly out of whack. There were always differences in class of course, and in the laissez-faire mid to late 1800s times were very rough for the working poor. Fortunately things got better with the New Deal and F.D.R., but when conservatism got its hold on our country starting in the late 1970s and especially with Reagan, things got much, much worse. Though for a select few, things got much, much better. That would include people like John Paulson.
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
THE subprime mortgage mess that caused massive losses for home owners and banks was a little kinder to the hedge fund manager John Paulson. Betting subprime mortgage securities would sour, Mr Paulson earned $US3.7 billion ($3.95 billion) last year.
Yes, you read that correctly. That's billion with a 'b'. He wasn't the only one with Titanic-sized profits. Two other fund managers, George Soros and James Simons, who are notoriously secretive about their investments, earned $US2.9 billion and $US2.8 billion respectively, according to Alpha Magazine's annual list of top hedge fund earners.
The numbers left jaws agape across Wall Street and Washington. With his windfall from last year alone, Mr Paulson could have bought the troubled Wall Street giant Bear Stearns three times over. Or he could have matched the price Delta this week agreed to pay to merge with Northwest Airlines and still have $US600 million left over.
ABC did an article on him as well, but failed to include the fact that his ridiculous income was scalped off the backs of millions of Americans who are facing foreclosure and the myriad effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, people like George Bush applaud this guy, who makes 80,000 times what an average American earns. Hedge fund managers like him also earn ridiculous sums of money and show the devastating gap between the rich and the poor to the nth degree.
Now while these hedge fund managers are mentioned in the press for their wealth and earnings, the people who are not individually portrayed are those on the opposite end of the spectrum. The victims of our corporate economy are hidden away in the dark recessed ghettos of America. Rarely will you see an in-depth interview of the poor, because frankly the press wants to show people who "succeed" and not those who are the victims of others' success.
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