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Anyone else find it odd that George Soros is not on that list?
Exposing the Great American Bubble Barons: Join Us in the Investigation
By Kevin Connor, AlterNet
Posted on February 24, 2010, Printed on February 24, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145735/
A century ago, the robber barons at the helm of the U.S. economy were easily identifiable ans of industry: Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, financier and steel magnate J.P. Morgan. It was easy to draw the link between the robber barons' brutal business practices and their immense wealth; it was clear that these businessmen were, quite literally, robbing the American people in the course of amassing their fortunes.
The influence of today's super-rich is significantly harder to trace. Much of their wealth is managed in opaque Wall Street investment vehicles and byzantine corporate structures. They are less likely to slap their names on their ventures, and their profitable relationships with the most destructive segments of our economy are hidden behind layers of corporate control. In our post-industrial economy, they amass wealth not by producing things with actual value, but rather by riding waves of speculation, such as the housing bubble, to dizzying heights of wealth.
Today's super-rich are not robber barons, but bubble barons:
they extract their fortunes from intensifying cycles of imaginary wealth creation and destruction, live at a far remove from their businesses, and evade accountability in the public spotlight. The robber barons stood behind their economic crimes; the bubble barons, for the most part, do not.
Beginning today, AlterNet and LittleSis.org are partnering in an investigation of these bubble barons -- a select group of American multi-billionaires who saw astronomic gains in wealth during the housing bubble, and who so far have evaded all accountability in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Who are they? Where did their wealth come from? Where has it gone? How do they exercise their influence?
To find out, we need your help: Click here to sign up with LittleSis.org and join AlterNet's investigation of America's bubble barons.(E-mail [email protected] if you have any questions.)
We've identified 67 "bubble barons" (also listed below) to target with this investigation. All are worth $2 billion or more, and all have ties to the industries that benefited most from the housing bubble: real estate and finance. Some, such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, have enjoyed increases of over 400 percent on what were substantial fortunes in the pre-bubble years. Others, such as former Enron trader John Arnold, are newly minted billionaires.
Following the bubble barons' money will be a key component of our investigation; naturally, this will entail a closer look at their charitable and political activities. Bloomberg, for one, supports public health initiatives through his family foundation. George Soros is a well-known funder of progressive causes through his Open Society Ins ute. The Koch brothers, on the other hand, are prominent backers of conservative organizations.
All of these fortunes were built on the illusion of a sound economy -- an illusion that came crashing down for most of the country in 2007 and 2008, as record numbers of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure and saw their jobs disappear.
But the illusion didn't come crashing down for the bubble barons. The U.S. government came to their rescue, in the form of massive, taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts and a monetary policy that rewards wealth, above all -- the bubble barons, above all. While Americans struggle under the burden of double-digit interest rates on mortgages and credit cards and see their savings accounts eek out gains measured in basis points, the bubble barons are essentially getting paid unprecedented amounts to sit on their money, simply because they have lots and lots of it.
Ferociously destructive for most of the country, the bubble economy -- albeit in slightly different form -- continues to generate tremendous wealth for the super-rich.
Who are the bubble barons? We need your help mapping their connections and following their money; where is their bubble wealth going, and where has it gone, now that most of the country has entered a period of economic devastation? Click here to sign up. Or e-mail [email protected] to learn more.
Ultimately, you will be asked to adopt a bubble baron and find out as much as you can about that individual. Which companies has he worked at, founded or owned? Which boards does he sit on? Where does he invest his money? Does he make charitable donations? If so, to whom? Where did he go to school? Who are his closest professional associates and business partners? Who is he married to?
At the conclusion of the investigation, we will produce a network visualization of the bubble barons and their connections, an article summarizing our findings, and a list of the top 10 bubble barons, as selected by the investigative team (you!). All of this will be published on AlterNet in coming weeks, and all participating citizen journalists will be acknowledged as contributors to the research.
A note on our methodology: The initial set of 67 bubble barons was compiled using lists of Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans for the past 10 years. We selected individuals who had seen large, sustained increases in wealth over that period, and had a net worth of $2 billion or more as of 2009 (multi-billionaires). We included individuals with the strongest ties to the finance and real estate industries.
Some notable names did not make the initial list because they did not see net gains in wealth over the past 10 years. Warren Buffett, surprisingly, hasn't seen huge gains since the dot-com bubble, if Forbes' data is to be believed. Others didn't make the cut because their industry was not adequately bubble-oriented (e.g. Oprah, Bill Gates and the Google founders).
The list is subject to revision, so if you are particularly interested in adding an individual you believe fits the criteria, please make the case in an e-mail to [email protected] or the research group (and be prepared to sign up and tackle research on that particular bubble baron).
The Bubble Barons (in alphabetical order):
Sheldon G Adelson
John Arnold
Andrew Beal
Leon D Black
Michael Bloomberg
Donald Bren
Ronald W Burkle
Charles Butt
Steven Cohen
William E Conway Jr
Daniel D'Aniello
Ray Dalio
Stanley Druckenmiller
Dan Duncan
Philip Falcone
Malcolm Glazer
Kenneth Griffin
William Gross
Harold G Hamm
Timothy Headington
William Hilton
Robert Holding
Carl C Icahn
Rupert H Johnson Jr
Charles B Johnson
George Kaiser
Pauline MacMillan Keinath
Peter N Kellogg
Richard Kinder
Charles G. Koch
David Koch
Bruce Kovner
Henry R Kravis
E Stanley Kroenke
Edward Lampert
Richard LeFrak
Theodore Lerner
Cargill MacMillan Jr
Whitney MacMillan
Michael Milken
Paul Milstein
David Murdock
Daniel Och
John Paulson
Ronald Perelman
Peter G Peterson
Marion MacMillan Pictet
Ira Rennert
George Roberts
Julian Robertson Jr
Stephen Ross
David Rubenstein
Donald Schneider
Stephen Schwarzman
David Shaw
Harold Simmons
James Simons
John Sobrato
George Soros
David Tepper
Paul Tudor Jones II
Dennis Washington
Stephen A Wynn
Samuel Zell
Daniel Ziff
Dirk Ziff
Robert Ziff
Kevin Connor is a co-founder of LittleSis.org. He is also co-director of the Public Accountability Initiative.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145735/
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Expected (WC and maybe 101a? ) response:
"These people have done nothing illegal. Getting obscenely wealthy as anonymous, unregulated "money changers" in the sacred "temple" of American Capitalism while creating nothing and sucking in the wealth of and impoverishing others, even crippling the world's economy, is The Great American Dream Machine that everybody can operate (esp if you're born wealthy and paid no "death taxes" when inheriting your parents' wealth".
Anyone else find it odd that George Soros is not on that list?
This is a great project; VERY interested to see the results. Putting names and faces on this will be interesting.
First name that jumped of the page to me:
John PAULSON
what do you think Butt did that was wrong?
Look more closely. Soros IS on the list.
There are some others that I wonder about, though.
How does Charles Butt figure in finance or real estate? I thought he just got
rich by monopolizing groceries in Texas.
My bad. I didn't see it at first glance.
By the way, is it somehow a crime to make money off the stock market?
Isn't this what we all hope our mutual fund managers will do?
If you're in a net positive position over the last 3 years in the stock market I want your manager's name.
I've made back a lot of what I lost, but I'll never make back all of it.
The more serious answer to your question is, obviously, nothing. Having said that, however, I am conviced that the market went as low as it did in March of 2009 is because short sellers were more interested in making short term gains (no pun intended) at the expense of the national interest.
So, generally, nothing is wrong, but that doesn't mean that I believe that some further regulation isn't needed in the market. None of which has anything to do with why these folks are calling the Forbes 400 robber barons. I could not see any compelling rational in the rant of the article.
"stock market"
are you joking, or stupid?
Here's what a Goldman trader did. When oil was $35/barrel, he bought 5 tankers filled and parked them in the Caribbean. Then somehow (secret oil trades and market manipulators like Goldman? nah, never happen), even with the world demand way down, oil shoots up to $150/barrel and he unloads his tankers.
stock market?
and we had the debate here why oil was so high, when the Saudis were saying they had oil to sell buy no buyers (supplies weren't tight) and world economy/demand was cratering.
Oil is still an artificially high $80/barrel, sucking an excess $1B/day out of Americans' pockets.
Drill, Baby, Drill!
Basically, how much these people make, where they put their money, what they do with their money...is NONE OF YOUR ING BUSINESS YOU ING ENVIOUS BUBBLE WART!
it is when it is our money...because what the robber barons do with their money affects our money.
Banking is fundamentally different from other forms of business.
and I can't believe I'll say it but I'm inclined to agree with Boutons statement about the stock market. The sooner people wake up to the economic/debt slavery we are all living in the better.
"stock market"
are you joking, or stupid?
Here's what a Goldman trader did. When oil was $35/barrel, he bought 5 tankers filled and parked them in the Caribbean. Then somehow (secret oil trades and market manipulators like Goldman? nah, never happen), even with the world demand way down, oil shoots up to $150/barrel and he unloads his tankers.
stock market?
and we had the debate here why oil was so high, when the Saudis were saying they had oil to sell buy no buyers (supplies weren't tight) and world economy/demand was cratering.
Oil is still an artificially high $80/barrel, sucking an excess $1B/day out of Americans' pockets.
Drill, Baby, Drill!
Can we just summarize all your posts as "Rich people are evil."?
"Can we just summarize"
yeah, sure. The devil is in the details, and you refuse to look there, with your brain-dead, knee-jerk right wing "ideology" GFY
Jealousy is a childish emotion.
How many people on this forum do you think have mutual fund managers?
Anyone who has a 401k for starters.............
Uh, everyone that has a 401(k).
That's my question. It seems he doesn't meet their criteria of being heavily into real estate or finance. His net worth is also NOT the value of HEB. He has a brother and they own jointly. I saw an estimate of their family fortune at @$2.2B, but that was pre-bust. Charles himself may not even be in the billionaires club any more, since only a portion of that is his.
I think rich people are like any other people. Some of them are , and some of them are nice. I don't see the logic in just going down a list of rich people and labeling all of them as "bubble barons".
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