10 Billionaires' Dirty Tricks to Rig the System

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/155661/10_billionaires%27_dirty_tricks_to_rig_the_system/

***SNIP

1. John Paulson

In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized millions of Americans had signed up for mortgages they couldn't afford and would soon start defaulting on their payments, causing the housing bubble to burst. So he took out "insurance" on stocks made up of bundled-together mortgages, which had been sold to investors. Paulson even teamed up with Goldman Sachs to create new stocks -- in which he helped select the mortgages, ensuring there'd be lots of faulty ones - and then took out "insurance" on them. This was like taking out insurance on someone else's car, after arranging with the car manufacturer to put in faulty brakes. When the housing market collapsed, triggering the Wall Street meltdown, Paulson collected $3.7 billion, giving him the all-time record for profiting from the misery of others.

2. Larry Ellison

Software billionaire Larry Ellison is one of the richest men in America. By 2010, he had accumulated a net worth of $27 billion - enough to allow him to spend about $51 million a week or $303,000 an hour -- without even digging into his principal. Nevertheless, in 2008, he contested the tax bill on his 23-acre California estate, and was awarded a $3 million refund, which had to be paid by school boards and municipalities. The Portola Valley School District in northern California repaid him some $250,000, the cost of hiring three or four new teachers. The refund was yet more pocket money for Ellison - enough to increase his spending that week from $303,000 to $321,000 per hour.

3. Steve Schwarzman
Wall Street titan Steve Schwarzman has fought bitterly to hold onto a tax loophole that benefits private equity managers like himself. Schwarzman even characterized attempts by President Obama to close the loophole as "war - it's like when Hitler invaded Poland." Schwarzman, who has a net worth of $4.7 billion, had a better idea for deficit reduction - collecting income tax from millions of Americans who don't pay income tax because they are too poor. Although these poor Americans do pay plenty of payroll and sales taxes, Schwarzman complained that exempting them from income tax amounted to giving them "special deals." In Schwarzman's view, then, removing favored tax treatment from the rich is Hitlerian, while removing favored tax deals from the poor is just sound policy.

4. Mark Zuckerberg

As the inventor of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg seems like a worthy sort of billionaire. But does he really deserve $17.5 billion (with billions more to come, as Facebook goes public)? Zuckerberg's contribution was actually quite marginal. He simply adapted the technological breakthroughs that had led to the Internet, and before that the personal computer, and before that the mainframe computer... all the way back to the wheel. An estimated 90 percent of all wealth generated today is due to this "knowledge inheritance" of the past. So shouldn't society get a bigger share of the benefits through the tax system? Would that have discouraged Zuckerberg? As he scrambled to develop Facebook, it's unlikely he worried about the taxes he'd pay if he became incomprehensibly rich. Besides, if he'd abandoned his quest, his competitors would have happily completed the job.

[trotsky]

1. I don't dare read the whole thing.

The first three make me physically ill. WTF is wrong with this country that we allow this crap?

[xchrom]

2. Dude, beats me. It's so ridiculous - you

Think you're nuts looking at it.

[canoeist52]

3. Warren Buffett - funny

"10. Warren Buffett

Among billionaires, here's a diamond in the rough. Not only has billionaire investor Warren Buffett vigorously championed higher taxes on the rich - refuting arguments that higher taxes destroy the incentive to invest - but he's mocked the notion that the rich deserve their wealth. Instead, Buffett argues that the rich are mostly just lucky winners in the "ovarian lottery," privileged by the circumstances of their birth. He's pointed out that his own particular talent - allocating capital - would have been a useless skill had he been born in many other eras or geographical locations. Indeed, with his poor eyesight and lack of tree-climbing skills, Buffett notes that, in an earlier age, he might well have ended up as some other animal's lunch."