Wiki answers
“Paulson started warning his investors back in the middle of 2006 that the frenzy to build and sell housing was a bubble about to pop. His New York-based firm, Paulson & Co., made big bets predicting the edifice would soon come crashing down. The wager paid off in the first nine months of 2007, when Paulson’s Credit Opportunities funds rose an average of 340 percent.
That gain earned Paulson an estimated $1.14 billion in performance fees for the nine months ended on Sept. 28. Fees on Paulson’s other eight funds bring his total to $2.69 billion, which puts Paulson and co-manager Paolo Pellegrini at the top of Bloomberg’s ranking of best-paid hedge fund managers. John Paulson is no relation to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.”
As a financial professional, I have no problem with someone making an honest market bet, based on a very wise analysis, that pays off handsomely.
What bothers me in this particuar case is that the bet wasn’t honest, in so much as Goldman purposely crafted a structure designed to fail, and then sold it as if it was a good investment. That is not an honest bet borne of wise analysis. It is fraud.
That’s the guy. I have not read the book yet (I own it but I’m finishing a re-reading of Atlas Shrugged) but I did read the WSJ article on him about 18 months ago.