Enough is Enough: Hedge Fund Manager Made $1.7 Billion Last Year
May 11, 2016
Enough is Enough: Hedge Fund Manager Made $1.7 Billion Last Year
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
Note: Late Tuesday, The New York Times and other national outlets reported that hedge fund managers are living in “another Wall Street Universe” relative to the already-excessive annual pay and compensation packages of finance chief executives. Top executives at hedge funds took home almost $13 billion in compensation last year, even as some of the industry’s biggest names lost their investors billions of dollars.
Another year of outrageous hedge fund compensation. There’s a lot of noise in this year’s election, but if there’s one consistent theme, it’s that people are furious with a rigged system. And they are right to be angry. They are furious with a financial system that lets so few make so much, when so many are making so little. And they can’t begin to comprehend how people making more than $1 billion a year pay a lower tax rate than people struggling to get by. With voters rising up, the Gilded Age for the hedge fund gazillionaires should come to an end.
These million-dollar-an-hour elites aren’t creating value; they’re capturing the compensation that should be paid to working Americans who do create this value.
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