Consider the billionaire

We hear a lot about billionaires these days.

Billionaire Donald Trump is leading the polls in the US presidential race.

Billionaire Koch brothers have committed to spending a billion dollars on the 2016 campaign.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson perpetually maintains a far right stable of politicians in both Israel and the US.

So what is a "billionaire" and why do they so consistently favour right wing politicians?

Although Obama has made some noises about raising the minimum wage, it remains at $7.25 an hour. The millions of Americans making that minimum wage earn about $15,000 a year if they have the good fortune of working full time.

When an American worker works full time for minimum wage, they won't make a million dollars even if they start at age 15 and work till they're 70.

A thousand of those workers, working full time from age 15 to age 70, will not add up to a billion dollars.

Here's a guy who made more money last year than a thousand of those workers will make in their entire lives, even if they start at 15 and keep the pedal to the metal till they're 70.







Yup, that would be hedgie Steve Cohen, who made 1.3 billions last year. Oddly enough, that was kind of an off year for him. Steve has had a run of rotten luck with SEC investigations and that kind of stuff.

And what does Steve do in order to merit more money in one year than a thousand drool-wipers and diaper changers working in old-age homes across America will earn in their lifetimes?

He and his peers are the new Rumpelstiltskins.

They spin straw into gold.

Sometimes they do it by taking over companies and parting them out. The manufacturing part goes to China. The union contracts go into Chapter 11. The pension plans go into their pockets.

It's a winning formula!

Sometimes they do it via brazen paper shuffling with derivatives so complicated that it takes a team of math doctorates to figure them out.

That's the Rumpelstiltskin economy.

Now to be fair, not all billionaires have been paper shufflers. Those Koch boys actually run a real conglomerate that does real stuff and employs quite a lot of real people. They  have committed themselves to spending a billion dollars to make sure a billionaire-friendly candidate makes it to the White House in 2016.

That's the equivalent of the lifetime earnings of a thousand low wage workers, pressed into service for one election.

You can call that a lot of things, but you cannot call it democracy.

Madoff flunkies convicted while big fish swim free

Well here's a blow for justice.  Five Bernie Madoff underlings have been found guilty of aiding and abetting the great man in his great Ponzi scheme.

Off with their heads! That's a verdict that's bound to ensure personal ruin for folks who were, at the most, guilty of ignoring their better judgement as their boss passed every test the SEC threw Madoff's way in the course of twenty years.

Meanwhile, Dick Fuld and Steve Cohen have no worries beyond a decent tee time at Wampanoag.

That's justice, American style!

Steve Cohen is toast

Time to go short on shares in Steve's world.

Even though a steady stream of SAC insiders has been finding themselves in the headlines, Mr. Cohen himself has managed for the most part to avoid the splatter.

The arrest of Mike Steinberg this morning brings the long nose of the law closer to Cohen than it's ever been. What's amazing about the Cohen story is that after Madoff, everybody, from the doorman to the janitor to the guidance counselor at your kid's school,  knew that year after year of suspiciously robust returns could mean only one thing.

Monkey business.

Dirty deals.

Insider trading.

Don't know where the SEC types are finding the cahones after letting this stuff slide for thirty years, but it seems the game has changed.

And it's about time.

Cohen hedge funds pay 600 million fine for insider trading "but nobody did anything wrong!"

There are hedge funds in all sizes, but when the adoring press discuss Steve Cohen he is invariably the "hedge fund titan."

Cohen is somewhat less titanic today after agreeing to pay $616 million in fines over a couple of SEC insider trading investigations.

Some of his bigger investors have been pulling hundreds of millions out of Cohen's funds over the past few months as speculation increased that the SEC investigation wasn't going away.

Nor are the SEC done with Cohen, in spite of these record-setting fines. He may yet face criminal charges.

Slide over Bernie, Steve Cohen's gonna squeeze in there too...

No sign of panic yet as Feds sniff around Cohen's SAC Capital.

But does it not seem somewhat apocryphal to read about those consistent 30% returns?

After Bernie's fall from grace everybody and their uncle was claiming "oh ya, 15% return year after year; we all knew something was fishy!"

If 15 is fishy, what the hell is 30?

Better slide over in your cell there at Butner, Mr. Madoff. You'll be having company soon.

Steve and Bernie, together at last!