fwiw, He spread his or his company’s money around on both sides of the aisle.
‘Protection’ money.
*PING*
I’ll bet if you dig hard enough, George Soros’ filthy hands will be found somewhere in that.
The narrative is not that he is a major dem donor, it’s the the wonderful obumber is prosecuting him even tho he is a dem donor.
He is protected. No jail time if found guilty.
Its a set up to show the masses that Obama is serious. He isn’t. He is a corporatist and Marxist. He will sacrifice the middle class. Of course, that is most Freepers.
“Nadeam Elshami” should tell you quite a bit - inholy alliance
No kidding!?
Kind of a non-story... “The billionaire hedge fund manager at the center of an alleged fraud hatched at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank, has given tens of thousands of dollars to both parties.”
An equal opportunity whore-payer who needs to be behind bars, regardless.
If it were up to me I’d throw the whole government out and draft productive Americans and choose them by lot. Would be a VAST improvement.
Wow, he covered all the bases. But who had the power to make things happen?
Paulson & Company
Alan Greenspan - advisory board member
******
Hedge fund manager John Paulson has profited more than anyone else from the financial crisis. His $3.7 billion payday in 2007 broke every record, and he made it all by betting against homeowners, shareholders, and the rest of us.
Paulson is the most conspicuous of Wall Street’s winners. Paulson & Co.’s funds (with an estimated $36 billion under management and growing by the day) were up a staggering $15 billion as the markets teetered in 2007; one fund gained 590 percent, another 353 percent. All this reportedly garnered him a personal payday of $3.7 billion, among the biggest in history.
By scoring returns of this magnitude, Paulson has dwarfed the success of George Soros.
Paulson makes no apologies. He describes in detail how he pulled off the greatest financial coup in recent history—a two-year bet that the calamity we are now experiencing would take place. It was a megatrade involving dozens of financial instruments, along with prescient wagers that banks like Lehman Brothers would eventually go under.
A research firm is now calling Paulson the George Soros of derivatives markets, where the bulk of speculation against European debt and the Euro is happening; the Telegraph says that so far “no hedge fund has put its head above the parapet in this destructive trade,” but the rumor is that Paulson is behind it.
If Paulson is the hedge fund king behind the parapet, as rumored in English and reported in Greek, then it would seem fairly likely that Paulson and Goldman partnered — colluded? — to build profitable short positions against Greek debt. That Goldman was shepherding hedge fund client Paulson around Athens in recent weeks would seem to suggest that the bank and hedge fund are working together in Greece.
Paulson and Goldman have partnered before — on the subprime short trades that won them enormous profits in the midst of the housing. Those trades have gotten a lot of attention, but the fact that Paulson and Goldman worked together to make it all happen has received much less ink. The story of Paulson’s investments is detailed in Gregory Zuckerman’s book, The Greatest Trade Ever. Goldman plays a prominent role, setting up the CDOs that Paulson would wager against, and then selling them to investors. The star Goldman trader who placed the bank’s winning bets against the subprime market, Josh Birnbaum, was reportedly in frequent contact with Paulson, at one point encouraging him to back off his bets (perhaps to make more room for Goldman).
Since Paulson was in the room with Goldman (and several other banks) when these CDOs were first conceived, it would seem that the fund had an unfair edge over the investors that would lose their shirt buying the securities. Zuckerman notes that Deutsche Bank suffered losses because it couldn’t find takers; that famous taker, AIG, may have been Goldman’s convenient solution.
These parallels raise obvious questions: was Paulson also in the room with Goldman before it tried to sell Greece on a new way to hide its debt this past November? As a hedge fund client of Goldman’s, did Paulson have special information about Greece’s true debt situation? Are Goldman and Paulson partnering, once again, to profit from the downfall of an entire country/continent?
Paulson does not appear as a defendant in the SEC’s lawsuit, which hones in on whether Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) disclosed conflicts of interest. But if the allegations in the suit are true, then Paulson had inside, perhaps non-public, and very material knowledge about a security that made him money — and lost Goldman clients $1 billion.
“Paulson’s fund is a private entity and his records are not public, which is probably why you haven’t seen charges brought against him,” says Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services. “The government may still be gathering information, but I can’t imagine them not going after him.”
In light of today’s SEC’s allegations, it seems inevitable that questions will arise regarding whether Paulson was manipulating the subprime market for his hedge fund’s gain, and what lengths he went to in order to make sure his big bet against the American economy came up a winner.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/16/news/companies/SEC_goldman_paulson.fortune/index.htm
Protection money...
The billionaire hedge fund manager at the center of an alleged fraud hatched at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment bank, has given tens of thousands of dollars to both parties. Campaign fundraising records show that John A. Paulson, founder and chairman of the hedge fund Paulson & Co., gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in June, qualifying him as a major Democratic donor. He also gave $2,300 to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) reelection campaign in February of last year and $4,800 to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) last April, according to records filed at the Federal Election Commission... Paulson's support of Democrats, however, may give Republicans ammunition when Democrats bring their financial regulatory reform bill to the Senate floor next week, as planned... The SEC alleged that Paulson & Co. participated in a scheme in which Goldman sold subprime residential mortgage-backed securities to investors, such as foreign banks and pension funds, that were expected to lose value. Paulson & Co. bet heavily against the value of the fund, named Abacus 2007-AC1, which included mortgage bonds it viewed as overvalued, earning millions at the expense of Goldman clients who invested in it... Goldman earned between $15 million and $20 million to create and market the fund to investors who did not know that Paulson helped select its holdings and then bet it would lose value, according to the SEC. Reid seized on the allegations to argue that the Senate should pass a Democratic Wall Street reform bill... "We will stop banks from becoming 'too big to fail' and end taxpayer bailouts," Reid said... Paulson gave thousands to other senior Senate Democrats in previous election cycles. He gave $4,600 to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and $4,600 to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) in 2008, according to FEC records. Paulson... gave $2,300 to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign and $2,300 to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign[s] in 2007. He gave $5,000 to House Republican Whip Eric Cantor's (R-Va.) leadership PAC in 2009 and a $1,000 contribution to Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.) in 2008.Thanks NormsRevenge.
My question to Reid and every pol accepting huge sums of money from individuals involved in financial fraud:
How can we trust them to write anti fraud legislation that will hurt their biggest donors?
Isn’t it more likely this legislation will encumber honest financiers and provide cover for the frauds driving 18 wheelers through loopholes in the law?
No problemo... Holder will stop the process as soon as he gets another fat dem “donation.”