Paul Tudor Jones wants the "free market" to solve wealth inequality. LOL!!!

Billionaire trader Paul Tudor Jones thinks the "free market" is going to solve income and wealth inequality. Keep dreaming, Paulie. He also thinks that capitalists should just "give" more of their profits to workers in the form of higher wages. Guess what? That's not capitalism. (Is he really advocating for Socialism?)

Would he be okay with the state making things more equitable, like it's done at certain times in the past? Of course not, he already made that clear. The free market has to be the one to do it.

What fucking bullshit these people.

And he says that income inequality will eventually be addressed...either through war or revolution or, shriek...HIGHER TAXES. (I'm sure he'd prefer the former two.) He lumps taxes in with war and revolution. Nice. Yeah, to his kind it's worse.

By the way...it wasn't the "free fucking market" that made guys like Paul Jones so vastly more wealthy than the average Jones; it was policies of the state, which he and his kind control.

Related: Protesters to picket Paul Tudor Jones' home over income inequality

Seems Jones is a big supporter of Republicans. Not that Dems have done much to end income inequality (think, Clintons and their cronies), but Jones' choice of party affiliation is disturbing and hypocritical.

Podcast for May 22. I talk to Jon Reznick and the work of Hedgclippers.or, exposing Paul Tudor Jones

My guest was Jon Reznick, publisher of the Competitive Advantage Research blog. Jon follows the money so to speak of political contributions made by powerful hedge fund managers (and others). His work helped Hedgeclippers do that great video on Paul Tudor Jones, exposing him as the not-so-charitable and well meaning fellow that everyone thinks he is.

Interesting convo. Listen.

Podcast for May 22: My conversation with Jon Reznick and discussion of Paul Tudor Jones and more.

My podcast for Monday, March 23. $719 TRILLION. Inflation. Paul Tudor Jones.

Podcast for March 23. 
$720 TRILLION. Inflation. Paul Tudor Jones.

Paul Tudor Jones on inequality: He has nothing new to offer

Paul Tudor Jones' view that the private sector is what we need to rely on to solve massive income and wealth inequality is ignorant.

Dumb AF hedge funds reeling. Tudor lays of 15% of staff amid losses and general cluelessness.

Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire founder of Tudor investment Corp cut 15% of his staff amid losses and redemptions. You could see this coming a mile away.

The hedge fund industry is reeling because these guys are complete morons. They got everything wrong from predicting hyperinflation from monetary operations to debt crises that never materialised to warnings about skyrocketing interest rates to endless recession calls and market crashes, and promises of soaring gold prices and on and on.

All because they don’t understand sovereign money systems. All because endlessly conflated currency issues and currency users. All because they were too “serious” to pay attention to MMT.

Now they’re dying. Good. A total bunch of unjustifiably rich jerks.

Tudor Jones, Soros, Druckenmiller, Chanos, Kyle Bass, Schiff, Gundlach, Gross, Dalio, Ackman, Einhorn...I’m sure I am leaving out many, but those are some of the big names. Totally clueless. They don’t understand MMT and if by chance they've heard of it I am sure they scoffed at it. Losers.

Let ‘em laugh. I am talking their money.

This is the approach that allowed me to call everything right. My students and followers, many novices, running circles around these hedge fund clowns. In currencies, bonds, commodities, stocks, gold, economic forecasters.

The pretenders are exposed for the fools they are. Their money will be gone soon unless they buy some more politicians that will allow them to cheat and commit fraud and insider trading so that they can protect their fortunes.

In the meantime me and my team will be taking nice chunks of their money away. Honestly. Legally. Without cheating.

Knowledge is power and combined with the right information that's killer.

Dogma, ideology, arrogance, ignorance, stubbornness,  blindness...all applied to these idiots. Good bye to the whole lot of them. Ignorant parasites. They suck.

Gold at an 8-month low

I haven't written much on gold in a while because the story's been told, mainly here, and in a few other places about how utterly lousy it is as an investment.

So many people got reamed by the disastrous advice of people like Peter Schiff, Alex Jones  and Glen Beck, all of whom were beating the table with their crazy end of the world scenarios and how you had to own gold because it was going to the moon.

What's bizarre is that these people still have huge followings, but I have stopped trying to even come close to figuring that out because it makes no sense to me other than to say it's a statement about the psychology of mass behavior and cults in general.

If there's one thing that MMT got really right it was the fact that all the central bank monetary operations would not lead to inflation and therefore that meant that gold was really a hedge against nothing.

Seeing quacks like the aforementioned get tripped up in the markets is one thing, but even really big shot names got caught up in the gold frenzy; guys like John Paulson and Soros and David Einhorn and even Paul Tudor Jones as well as many others. These were all guys running big money who were ultinmately exposed as people who knew little about the true monetary and economic impact of policies that were being implemented at the time.

Anyway, now that I've written about gold and laughed at others I guess it's safe to buy it and I will look back on this and be appropriately shamed. Haha.

Seriously, though, I will wait for the Fed to raise rates and buy into the inevitable selloff that occurs in gold when that happens. You see, just as they got it wrong about QE being inflationary the same folks are going to get it wrong about rate hikes being deflationary.

Remember, the government is a net payer of interest so a hike in rates actually equates to a fiscal   injection. It's deficit spending or, at least, spending.

Who REALLY runs the US Treasury: Hedge fund traders

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (TBAC) consults with the US Treasury and advises them on the strength of the US economy (I thought the Fed is charged with that task) and provides recommendations on debt management issues.

Here is the statement from the Treasury's website:

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee ("Borrowing Committee”) of The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) is an advisory committee governed by federal statute that meets quarterly with the Treasury Department. The Borrowing Committee’s membership is comprised of senior representatives from investment funds and banks. The Borrowing Committee presents their observations to the Treasury Department on the overall strength of the U.S. economy as well as providing recommendations on a variety of technical debt management issues. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association does not participate in the deliberations of the Borrowing Committee.

So who are these people who are not accountable to Congress, to the President, to taxpayers, to no one but themselves? They are Wall Street money managers, traders and hedge fund operators.

They are people like, Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Management, a billionaire hedge fund trader. Or Richard Axilrod of Moore Capital Management, another commodity speculator. Then there's Stephen Rododsky, Managing Director of Pimco, whose boss, Bill Gross, SHORTED US TREASURIES even as his employee, Mr. Rodosky SITS ON THIS VERY BOARD ADVISING THE US TREASURY HOW TO OPERATE IN THE BOND MARKET!

Then there is this "genius" statement from the "genius" chairman of this committee, Matthew E. Zames:

This "genius" doesn't even understand how rates are set, the role of the Fed, risk (or lack thereof) to fiat currency issuers when it comes to their own debt/spending.

Are you kidding????????

This is beyond outrageous. This is a total hijacking of the American economy by a bunch of speculators and market operators that have no interest in the average American whatsoever. This is a sham! The public needs to know about this! Please distribute to as many people as possible!

Paul Rosenberg — The Rigged Economic System: Why No One Can End Reagan’s “Dead Wrong” Voodoo Economics

It’s not just Obama, in Hanauer’s view. “This is what progressives have done for generations, is that we ceded to the other side that the rich are job creators; we ceded to the other side that less regulation equals more growth; we ceded to the other side that if wages go up, then employment goal go down. And then we wonder and complain about the policies that flow naturally and logically from that set of baseline assumptions. That’s the problem,” he said—a failure to contest the basic framework of economic thought. Hanauer has challenged that framework, with what he calls “middle-out economics”, which was the subject of the summer 2013 issue of Democracy.

He made the same point again, about the failure to contest fundamentals, with a slightly different emphasis and explanation. “The problem with our politics is President Obama and the people who surround him, don’t represent an alternative to trickle down economics, they are trickle-down-lite,” Hanauer told me. “They’re sort of kinder-and-gentler trickle-down economics. They can talk a little bit about the importance of the middle class, but, in my opinion, they haven’t quite seen clearly that they’ve gotten cause-and-effect reversed. They still think that a thriving middle class is an effect of growth, a consequence of growth, and the truth is in a technological, modern economy, a thriving middle class is the cause of growth…. The middle class creates rich people, not the other way around.

This used to be well-understood by everyone. During America’s long post-World War II boom, the incomes of all levels growing approximately equally—though slightly slower at the very top. “That’s how you sustain virtuous cycle of increasing returns which capitalism can be. Capitalism can be constructed in a way so that everyone does better all the time. It’s a beautiful thing,” Hanauer said. “But if the power dynamics change in really extreme ways, as they have in the last 30 years, and all of the value of enterprise is sucked out by a few owners and the senior managers, then you basically killed the goose that layed the golden egg.”....

Hanauer took a moment to describe that logic: 

Neoclassical economics and the trickle down policy framework that we have derived from it argues that there is a trade-off between fairness and growth. The general idea of trickle down economics is that the richer the rich get and the less constrained they are, less burdened in regulations, the more jobs they create, the better off everyone will be. It’s the concentrated accumulation of capital which is the principal driver of market capitalism. 

So, rising economic inequality isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of the trickle down economics. It’s how you know things are getting better, right? Because the richer the rich get, the more jobs they create. This is a general principle of the thing.

There’s only one problem: It’s “dead wrong,” Hanauer said flatly....

Wrong model:

And it’s based on the wrong sort of mathematics—like using addition to try to multiply and divide. “The economy isn’t this linear equilibrium system, it’s a complex, nonlinear, nonequilibrium systems, and is best understood not mechanistic terms, but eco-systemically.” Nonlinear, nonequilibrium mathematics is a good deal more difficult and complex than the math used by neoclassical economists. But the qualitative picture it paints is not that hard to grasp, as Hanauer explained it:

Once you see it eco-systemically, what you can see quite clearly is that arguing, for instance, that if wages go up employment will go down would be like arguing that if plants grow animals will shrink, right? Literally, that’s silly.On the contrary, businesses essentially eat the wages of workers, right? 

They subsist on the wages of workers, and so obviously, to a reasonable degree, the more wages rise, the more businesses—again, pressing the metaphor—have to eat. And that’s why the fundamental law of capitalism is that if workers have more money businesses have more customers, and need more workers.

It's a people problem according to Hanauer:

The problem with Obama’s thinking is not so much Obama himself, but the whole entourage of policy people surrounding him. “Trust me, these guys all got PhD’s in economics in the same places, they all learn the same crappy neoclassical ideas, they are captured by them, and they can’t get out of their own way,” Hanauer said. “And I think that’s the big problem. They don’t know how to make this argument because they are so wedded to these old stale ideas. Even if they say they’re not. But they are!”....

His fix:

“Growth, in technological capitalist economies, is a consequence of the feedback loop between increasing amounts of innovation and increasing amounts of demand. And the mechanism that drives that feedback loop is inclusion. Inclusive economic policies are the thing that create growth. The more people who are included as innovators and entreprenuers, and the more people who are included as robust consumers, the better the thing goes.”... 

Much much more in the article. The last half finishes strong.

“You have to be able to define, in concrete terms, what your alternative theory of growth is. I submit to you – and I know this sounds self-aggrandizing – but no one on our side, can explain to you as succinctly and clearly where growth actually comes from than me and my gang. When I say growth in technological capitalist economies is a consequence of the feedback loop between increasing amounts of innovation and demand, that’s a theory of growth. So, you find me a Democratic leader whose said anything like that, find one, you’ll find lots of complaints, you’ll find lots of great attacks. So, our theory of the case is that until we can get people to recognize how these technological economies actually grow, and unite people around an alternative to the trickle-down economics idea, until you do that, you cannot build the machine. Once you do that, then the machine part’s easy.”

Very insightful but not quite in paradigm with respect to a monetary economy. Someone needs to slip him as copy of Warren's 7DIF.

AlterNet
The Rigged Economic System: Why No One Can End Reagan’s “Dead Wrong” Voodoo Economics

Paul Rosenberg

See also

Business Insider
PAUL TUDOR JONES: Income inequality will end in revolution, taxes, or war
Julia La Roche

ht' Roger Erickson

Hillary Clinton wants companies to be nice and share. Are you f**king kidding me???

Hillary Clinton will offer up her economic ideas today and I can't wait to see what those ideas will be although I have an idea  of my own. I'm sure it will be more of the same neoliberal shit that has been decimating the middle class and creating the greatest income and wealth inequality since the 1920s. But...I'll reserve judgement. Hehe.

We do have a snippet of one of her ideas this morning. She wants companies to "share" their profits. Isn't that nice.  Let's all share.

Check this out:

"The Democratic front-runner has hinted at the idea before, saying last month that she hopes to create “new incentives” for companies to share profits with more employees than just their top executives. A Clinton aide said the candidate will offer up changes to the tax code to encourage companies to participate, but did not say what those changes would be."

So here we go again with these fucking useless tax incentives. Like what? Like giving some company a tax break if they raise the wages of workers a smidgen? Fine, they'll raise some workers' pay and fire a bunch of others.

Let's be clear: we didn't get to this place of monumental inequality by incentivizing. We passed laws that literally allowed corporations to bludgeon or steal workers' productivity and pay.

Clinton's husband was a big part of this when he passed NAFTA, which led to  huge  job outsourcing. In addition, his deregulation of the financial industry led to the Great Recession, which most workers have still not recovered from. Furthermore his "welfare reform" was nothing of the sort: it was welfare redistribution, from the poor to the wealthy and big business.

You're not going to get corporations to be nice and share and give away their profits. Forget it. Most of them can't anyway. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to make as much as possible. This is Paul Tudor Jones shit. He's probably advising her.

The game has to be changed. Higher minimum wages, more social spending, job guarantee, investment in education, health care, etc.

My prediction: Clinton will come nowhere near these suggestions.

Robin Hood gala shatters record for money raising and hypocrisy

On Tuesday night the Robin Hood Foundation had its annual gala and raised a record breaking $101 million in one night, shattering every record by any fund raising event ever.

It also shattered something else: the record for most monumental hypocrisy of all time.

That's because, while all these super rich hedge funders, celebrities and "0.1 percenters" basked in their self-importance and patted each other on the back for their obscenely phony show of "help" to the poor, the vast majority of these folks support political candidates and causes that have removed tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of government support for the truly needy. So their $100 million was really only "paying the tab" for their over the top display of self adulation.

If you think about the absurdity of this: a hedge fund guy (Paul Tudor Jones), worth $4 billion, who makes his money; a) by speculating--often driving up the price of food and fuel, which only adds to poverty and; b) charging hefty fees on the money he manages, which is largely in retirement funds of working people, he is lauded to the point of being considered, like, the new Mother Fucking Theresa.

Or consider, Bill Ackman, whose "job" it is to destroy companies and jobs (Herbalife) with malicious short selling raids designed to take a business down, yet he is also lauded as some benevolent prince?

And all their speculator hedge fund friends who do the same?

WTF??

Like a good friend of mine said, "Nobody takes time to connect the dots."

Don't let these cretins confiscate your wealth!

I am starting to come full circle with my views as a result of all the nonstop ignorance being spewed by guys like Buffett.

I have gone from deep pessimism on the belief that these misinformed rantings would affect policy in a manner that brings on the very disasters they are taking about.

But now I am now starting to believe that their crazy, uneducated ideas actually will provide the fuel for a massive move in the other direction.

For example, they're all shorting the dollar yet their Armageddon forecasts may actually be causing policy to shift in a manner so as to create a global scarcity of dollars.

We saw the first hint of this last year and early this year when the Fed had to take unprecedented action to supply dollars via the forex swaps. This dollar lending went right over the heads of guys like Buffett, Gross, Schiff, etc. They never even mentioned it. They never understood it and its implications. How smart are they?? Really???

The U.S. current account deficit is dropping, probably in reaction to the rants of the aforementioned. As a result I see the dollar rising, not falling. In fact, their entire argument for a weaker dollar is based on the "debtor nation" idea; that we import more than we export. That's slowly going away.

The short positions of these guys or the short positions of those who follow them will fuel the long-term run higher, I am absolutely certain.

On the debt/inflation front, they have managed to drum up an inordinate fear of deficits, which keeps stimulus to a minimum, which keeps unemployment higher than it otherwise would have been, which keeps inflation low.

There will be no inflation, nor will there be an interest rate spike or massive exodus from Treasuries.

The bad news is, in the long-term, all of this NECESSITATES a lower standard of living for every American--no matter whether they are of the current generation or future generations. What a terrible shame it is for our kids and grandkids.

But if you are a savvy investor you can protect yourself and your families from the outrageous "confiscation" of your wealth and prosperity by these idiots. This is without question a form of tyranny--the tyranny of the ignorant--but you do not have to accept it!

Turn the tables on these cretins who wish to enslave you: cretins like Buffett, Paul Tudor Jones, Pete Peterson, David Walker, Schiff and his followers, and other, ordinary yet misinformed and zealous Americans who believe in this tripe.

It is your duty, no, YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, to do that. All that is asked of you is patience.

You cannot stop the forces that auger for outcomes based upon the REAL fundamentals and the REAL fundamentals are not the ones spoken about by the terrorists. Even THEY cannot stop those fundamentals.

Doing so is like trying to stop the movement of the earth's tectonic plates.

I am convinced that if you take a position against ignorance (i.e. against the rantings of Buffett, Gross, Roubini, Schiff, etc) it will result in you becoming rich beyond your wildest imagination. It WILL happen; it'll just take time.

For those who are patient, the rewards will be great, believe me. Quality rises to the surface...it's the law of the Universe.

In the end this will be, "The greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world," not like that phony sound bite Boone Pickens used to throw around.

How I learned to pick stocks from a little book.

I'm a contributor for Real Money at the Street.com. My macro calls on the economy, stocks, the dollar, gold, etc have been great. Many of you have seen these calls here and they killed. I use my knowledge of economics, MMT, government spending flows and all important, market psychology.

Very often people email me and ask for stock tips. I am a long time trader having been a member of four exchanges (CME, NYMEX, COMEX, NYFE) as well as trading the "prop" account of Credit Suisse and managing some money for Paul Tudor Jones years ago.

My preferred trading markets are the Forex markets as you know.

However, I do invest in stocks.

Back in 2006 I had a radio show on BizRadio Network. A had a guest on once named Joel Greenblatt. He wrote, "The Little Book That Beats the Market." It was, I thinks, the first in that "Little Book" series. (And one of the best.)

In the book Greenblatt spelled out his formula for stock picking, which was a very simple formula of uncovering stocks that trade at deep value.

His ideas totally changed the way that I picked stocks. It was so simple and easy.

Along the way I made some tweaks to his approach. I incorporated my trading skills (buy low, sell high) and then added MMT, the government spending flows from the Daily Treasury Statement and Mental Game. (The latter is essential for any successful trading/investing.)

What I have come up with is an incredible stress free, highly rational and very successful formula for picking stocks that anyone can learn.

I am talking about high quality, brand name companies that pay dividends and are profitable. That's what you are buying.

So many people guess or go with tips or listen to brokers (who know nothing). I can teach you in a very short period of time how to be your own best stock picker. It's absolutely not hard.

With patience and persistence you can build your portfolio into something really meaningful with very little risk whatsoever.

Anyway, that is what I will be teaching in my Stock Trading Course, which  will be held online this coming Friday.

If you are interested click the button below.

Time to ask ourselves, why hasn't MMT caught on?

I am drawn to write this because of a comment I made on an earlier  post that started me thinking about MMT and its lack of broad acceptance.

Bill Mitchell, whom I have great respect for and who is an awesome writer and fierce proponent of MMT, writes in his blog today:

"...demonstrates a palpable failure to comprehend what the real issues confronting the Eurozone are and how Eurozone Member States (19 of them) are fundamentally different in terms of fiscal capacity relative to nations that issue their own currency."

Mitchell's an extremely smart guy, but he seems to suggest that Germany's leaders (and elsewhere in the ruling class of Europe) don't understand the difference between the whole currency issuing and non-currency issuing thing. Basically it's a statement that they're all stupid.

Now let me just fully disclose that I have been of this view for a long time and I have written, here, numerous times about my run-ins with people like David Stockman who totally contradict themselves left and right when they spout their nonsense. I have argued that this had to be a sign of stupidity because a really clever yet manipulative person who knew the truth, but was intent on spewing propaganda would have his/her story worked out in a way so as not to look self-contradictory. In other words, so as not to look stupid.

Furthmermroe, over the years of publishing this blog I have receieved dozens of emails from readers telling me that they used to think the way the mainstream thought, but thanks to MMT and a little reflection they have had an epiphany and now see, clearly, how the prevailing "wisdom" is all wrong. Furthermore, most of these folks had no formal training in economics, which is proof that people can shed false dogma's if they wish. I know I certainly did.

Matt Franko and I have spoken about this, too, where we have  pretty much agreed that it was stupidity that causes these folks to stay with their dogma despite mountains of evidence and proof that they are wrong (think: Reinhart and Rogoff fiasco) or, simply by looking at the ongoing failure of their policies and theories.

In the past I'd argue with Warren Mosler about this. Mosler would insist that many in the economic mainstream really knew the truth, but for whatever reason (and he offered no explanation) they would continue spewing their nonsense. I used to tell Mosler that he was naive and crazy to beleive that, but now I am beginning to think that Mosler was right. This has led me to see why, after 20+ years, MMT has gone nowhere and it won't go anywhere.

The powers that be have absolutely no reason to embrace MMT and change the way the game is being played. What for? The wealth and power that they are accumulating, which I am sure is beyond their wildest dreams, is reason enough to stay with the status quo even if the underlying concepts are "wrong." (Wrong for whom?)

Seriously, what reason do they have to change over to a system that would be more fair and equitable to everybody else when it does absolutely nothing for them? It's like Hillary Clinton saying she wants corporations to "share" more of their profits or, Paul Tudor Jones thinking there's a "free market" answer to inequality. The system has avarice and inequality built into its very nature and it was made that way not by kindness and gentle cajoling, but by brute force. To take it away requires brute force as well, but that ain't gonna happen. It simply cannot be wrested away and certainly not by a bunch of professorly dissertations or blog posts. Those in power don't give a shit about blog posts unless it suits their interests.

Look at Bernie Sanders. He may not be full blown MMT, but he's close and he has Stephanie Kelton working with him. Sanders is attracting huge crowds wherever he goes because regular people--Democrats and Republicans--love his message, but what chance does he have of winning? The powers that be will crush him when it comes to fund raising and they will be able to drown out or twist and poison his message and I'm sure he knows  that.

Furthermore even if Sanders was elected president how would he get his policies passed? He'd certainly be facing a Congress where most members were put there by the elites for the very reason of thwarting him. Sanders thinks it's a matter of more people voting, but I think he's naive on that  point. Over 60 million people voted for "change" when they voted for Obama and look what happened: more of the same.

Granted, Sanders would not be another Obama as he has plainly stated and I totally believe him on that point, however, this groundswell of grassroots support that he says is necessary to really affect change is not likely to happen because endless amounts of money would be spent to keep people voting against their own interests.

Even now you are starting to see many left-leaning pundits and some notable Democrats working hard to marginalize Sanders. Some might be tempted to say they are cannibalizing their own, but that would be incorrect. They just don't want to rock the system where they, too, have a place. Maybe not the top place, but a place nonetheless.

Perhaps I'm being too pessimistic. If I am, please, tell me why. Tell me where I am wrong. Tell me where I am making a mistake and all we need is more time and patience and enough people voting. Personally, I just don't see it.

If it's jungle  out there with a bunch of predators running around then we have to become one of the predators and not the prey. We need to get into the ruling class etiher by buying into it or riding its ideological coattails. I'm pretty sure that all of you who read this blog won't be able to stomach the latter. So that leaves only option #1. Let's roll!

Leon Cooperman is an egotistical piece of shit

Billionaire hedge fund manager, Leon Cooperman said he doesn’t need anybody crapping all over what he does for a living. He made those comments in response to remarks made by Hillary Clinton, who rightly pointed out that hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than truck drivers or nurses.

I’m not trying to defend Hillary. As Cooperman noted, she hangs out at Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons with the very folks from Wall Street that she skewers in her speeches about inequality. More importantly, Hillary and her husband have been the best friends of Wall Street and the worst enemies of the middle class and the truly needy. President Bill Clinton ended Glass–Steagall, which allowed the banks to run wild with our tax money and he pushed through welfare “reform,” which was not reform at all, but a transfer of public money to big business and the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

Yet despite the Clintons and their two-faced politics, this does not excuse the pompous, arrogant, comments from this egotistical piece of shit of a person who is Leon Cooperman. He wants us to feel sorry for him and his creed because there happens to be a candidate out there who has the audacity to suggest he pay higher taxes. (Remember that other scumbag piece of shit, Paul Tudor Jones, who equated higher taxes with war and revolution?)

If Cooperman’s recent comments are not nauseating enough, here’s part of a letter he wrote—and sent—to President Obama. Check out the over the fucking top hubris.

“The divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them,” Cooperman wrote. “It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents.”

The downtrodden? He thinks he’s the Statue of Liberty now? Should we replace the Great Lady with a giant copper statue of this fat fuck?

And more…

"You should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory…. Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be. As a group we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving. To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment."

He fills store shelves at Christmas????

Are you fucking kidding me? He’s Santa Claus now??

This is a mind-blowing display of over the top, egomaniacal narcissism.

Where does hubris come from? What, exactly, does Cooperman do for a living that gives him such a feeling of self-importance? I’ll tell you what he does: He’s runs a hedge fund that invests in stocks. Wow. Not exactly Mother fucking Teresa.

That’s right…he doesn’t run into burning buildings to rescue people like a fireman. He doesn’t clean bed pans, administer medicine or, care for the sick and the elderly like a nurse. And he doesn’t educate young people in the classroom so that they become productive members of society, like a teacher. Instead, he buys and sells fucking stocks—and loses money (down 4.2% in 2014 when the S&P was up 13%), but still, he DEMANDS your respect and he DEMANDS that the President of the United States respect him, too.

Personally, I am sick and tired of these parasitic motherfuckers. I’m all in with Keynes: let’s “euthanize the rentiers.”

These speculators; these scum, contribute nothing to society. Even worse: their speculations often drive up the costs in real terms for everything from food to fuel and very often, jobs.

And their donations to charity don’t get them off the hook, either. Like other wealthy people Cooperman gives to the charity of his choice in the amount that he pleases. It happens to be a few percent of his net worth. Big deal. Let’s face it, too, many rich people do this for status and recognition—to get their name on a hospital wing or campus building or something or, to get invited to some swank society party.

The fact of the matter is, most of these hypocrites support policies and politicians that have harmed the wealth and incomes of the middle class and poor. Private charity wouldn’t even be necessary if these assholes were not so obstructionist toward government’s natural role of “promoting the general welfare” of the citizenry. All these selfish assholes are concerned with is their own welfare.

Furthermore, Cooperman—yeah, I’m talking to you, pal—the bulk of all taxes collected by the Federal government come from working people.  More than 80% of all tax revenues are from employment taxes—withholding and FICA. I am pretty sure YOU are not getting a paycheck from an employer every week unless of course you’ve found some clever way to suck even more money from a company that you control.

I’ll just end up by saying that Cooperman is right when he says he doesn’t need someone crapping all over what he does for a living. What he needs is someone shitting all over him and his “work,” and then flushing both down the toilet.

Charity by the rich and large corporations is pure vanity or public relations. That's it.

I am not against charity. I think when it comes to charity most regular people have good intentions. But when I see charity turn into star-studded gala events that are reported as the hottest “ticket” in town, like the annual Robin Hood Foundation Ball, then I think it’s all one big vanity show.

It’s the elite wanting cleanse their consciences in a very ostentatious and very phony display of “compassion” for the less fortunate, even though I am sure that 99.9% of the attendees, if you asked them, would be pro-austerity, pro-entitlement reform, pro-deregulation, union bashing, anti-minimum wage ideologues.

In fact, I know it.

I’ve read statements by Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge fund trader who is also the founder of the Robin Hood Foundation. Here's one of his quotes on America's debt:

"We borrowed against the future, and soon we will have to pay."

Or what about another billionaire hedge fund guy, Stanley Druckenmiller, who is also very much a part of the charity elite and a big contributor to the Robin Hood Foundation. He's been going around screaming that we have an "entitlement problem."

These plutocrats may contribute to charity, but their overriding ideology is the usual out of paradigm stuff that is so much a part of the austerity push, which is literally impoverishing people.

So it’s really a very self centered vanity thing that they're doing. Yes, they’re raising money for the poor and the underprivileged, which is nice; however, it is their beliefs and more importantly, their inordinate influence on policy as a result of their money and status that keep the poor and underprivileged, well, poor and underprivileged. It’s almost like they want the downtrodden to stay down just so they can have their galas showing everyone how wonderful and generous they are.

The other type of charity that I am against, which is just as disingenuous and self-serving is corporate charity. For me, the best corporate charity you can have is just for corporations to pay their workers well. That’s all the “charity” they need; simply a decent paycheck, a living wage. I’m not talking about top executives either, who are routinely showered with lavish paychecks, but about all the workers right down to the guy stocking the shelves or, sweeping the restrooms.

Low wages have become a corporate ethos. It’s one thing to say, “That’s the only way we can make money,” which is what Wal-Mart founder, Sam Walton famously said:

"I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We're going to be successful, but the basis is a very low-wage, low-benefit model of employment." -Sam Walton

However, it's another thing when corporate profits go up, up and up, relentlessly, as they have been, while worker pay has been going the other direction: down, down, down. It’s not even as if worker pay just stayed steady, it’s been falling. Look at the chart below.

Corporate profits vs labor share

That is corporate profits against the share that labor gets. This means that all the gains in productivity have gone to firms and none of that has gone to workers. That means all the money has gone to the firms and nothing to the workers. In fact, workers have had their pay reduced.

A system like this can only exist where there is crushing, vice-grip control over economic policies affecting taxation, labor, income, trade, investment, etc. It's literally an industrial dictatorship. That's exactly what we have. It benefits large corporations and the plutocrats that control them. Nobody else.

So feel free to scoff at their phony and vane displays of charity.

I made a video about Paul Tudor Jones and his phony inequality concerns. Looks like others are doing the same, too.