Koch brothers: wealth grew from $7.5 billion to $50 billion in last seven years

[Craig234]

If we had more than 1 liberal in the senate, there might actually be a liberal agenda.

Lot of truth to that, but we actually have a few more, just nowhere a majority, and that's what the country needs there and in the House.

 

[halik]

Right but it doesn't always work that way. You can push the price up and someone else can push it back down. The spot price can get arbitraged up or the future price can be arbitraged back down. The ease of moving the price on far away contracts goes in both directions.

For sure, but with the momentum in the last couple years along with the various non-thesis about peak oil, third word countries getting middle class and expectation of inflation in the future, the smarter active strategies will be pushing the prices up across the whole curve.

The point I'm trying to make is that you don't need a whole lot of money to move the market in a direction and have it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low margin requirements and not a lot of liquidity in the far contracts make it so.

 

[Genx87]

The current numbers are approximately 67k employees. However they had 80k employees in 2007 and are currently making record revnues and profits and record personal income. So while they're making record amounts these "job creators" have actually eliminated 13k jobs in the past 4 years. This is what happens when Republicans get their way. They rich get richer and the not rich lose their jobs.

Are jobs charity now? A company cuts when it needs and expands when it needs. You see BOA that had Buffet invest 5 billion dollars cut 30,000 jobs 3 weeks after he announced his intentions? Damn evil rich buffet!

 

[Craig234]

I'm not sure anybody here except Matt knows how speculation actually works...

LOL.

Go read Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia" for a little clue, or one of the other good books on it.

 

[Craig234]

The current numbers are approximately 67k employees. However they had 80k employees in 2007 and are currently making record revnues and profits and record personal income. So while they're making record amounts these "job creators" have actually eliminated 13k jobs in the past 4 years. This is what happens when Republicans get their way. They rich get richer and the not rich lose their jobs.

Who cares if they double their wealth over a few years becoming one of the three wealthiest familes in the US, while cutting employment?

It's not as if that affects anyone else, as they buy the nation's statehouses and lobby for radical right-wing policies to shift more wealth from the country to themselves, pollute etc.

 

[blackangst1]

Who cares if they double their wealth over a few years becoming one of the three wealthiest familes in the US, while cutting employment?

It's not as if that affects anyone else, as they buy the nation's statehouses and lobby for radical right-wing policies to shift more wealth from the country to themselves, pollute etc.

I honestly believe you are more brainwashed than hard core Tea partiers. You're so caught up in ideology you've blinded yourself.

Poor man. What a miserable existance.

 

[Patranus]

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

One clue: is Soros spenidng his on lobbying to shift more wealth to the top?

If you think Soros is spending his money to not get a return on his investment then you are even more delusional than I first thought.

 

[Craig234]

If you think Soros is spending his money to not get a return on his investment then you are even more delusional than I first thought.

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

Show me how Soros' funding thinkprogress.org shifts massive wealth from society to him.

That's one thing you clueless types don't get. While Koches spend a fortune to fight for the right to pollute more and use parasitical derivaties, rich liberals want to pay MORE taxes.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

For sure, but with the momentum in the last couple years along with the various non-thesis about peak oil, third word countries getting middle class and expectation of inflation in the future, the smarter active strategies will be pushing the prices up across the whole curve.

The point I'm trying to make is that you don't need a whole lot of money to move the market in a direction and have it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low margin requirements and not a lot of liquidity in the far contracts make it so.

I don't disagree, but that's not quite the same thing as manipulation. Even if people were somehow manipulating the market Craig has still not prevented any compelling evidence that the Koch brothers have done so. He linked to a blog post that contained a graph that showed that their wealth increased dramatically and used a bunch half truths tied together with faulty logic to imply that they are wizards or something. The post was so dumb I'm not really sure what point it was trying to make.

 

[momeNt]

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

Show me how Soros' funding thinkprogress.org shifts massive wealth from society to him.

That's one thing you clueless types don't get. While Koches spend a fortune to fight for the right to pollute more and use parasitical derivaties, rich liberals want to pay MORE taxes.

It marginalizes the plots of men like Soros to implement a global currency, calls those who even dare mention it a kook!

 

[bfdd]

lol @ Craig. Soros is a currency trader, he's scum, he takes more money from the "poor" and "impoverished" that so many others yet idiots like Craig ignore it because he says pretty things every once in awhile.

 

[Patranus]

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

Show me how Soros' funding thinkprogress.org shifts massive wealth from society to him.

That's one thing you clueless types don't get. While Koches spend a fortune to fight for the right to pollute more and use parasitical derivaties, rich liberals want to pay MORE taxes.

Why else do you think Soros spends the money?
Soros is a smart man. He knows how to grow his wealth and he leverages the "progressive" agenda to do it.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Why else do you think Soros spends the money?
Soros is a smart man. He knows how to grow his wealth and he leverages the "progressive" agenda to do it.

Progressives like Craig believe Soros can do no wrong, they will happily follow him to hell while filling his coffers for "Good" causes.

 

[blackangst1]

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

Show me how Soros' funding thinkprogress.org shifts massive wealth from society to him.

That's one thing you clueless types don't get. While Koches spend a fortune to fight for the right to pollute more and use parasitical derivaties, rich liberals want to pay MORE taxes.

How about the fact that he has increased his wealth at a much faster pace than the Koch bros? And he speculates just like the Koch bros.

 

[Lanyap]

Who's worse, Soros or Koch brothers?

The Dodd “Financial Reform” Bill Lets Soros Off the Hook

Posted By Zubi Diamond On April 1, 2010 @ 11:22 am In AIM Column | Comments Disabled

The Chris Dodd financial reform bill is totally unnecessary, unwarranted and will be harmful to the Republic. The “too big to fail” concept is not the reason for the economic crisis. The problem is not Wall Street as a whole, but the hedge fund short sellers on Wall Street. They call themselves the “alternative investment community” and have organized themselves into a special interest group called the Managed Funds Association (MFA).

In order to understand where Dodd went wrong, the public must learn to differentiate between what I call the “good” Wall Street and the “bad” Wall Street, and what roles they play in our economy.

An example of the good Wall Street would be someone like Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs or Sandy Weill, and many more. These people create, run or finance money-making companies and serve the community with much-needed jobs and employment, products and services. The good Wall Street includes the general public mutual funds, retirement portfolios, common investors, banks and venture capital investors who finance and fund the loans for our homes and businesses. They fund and finance economic growth and expansion.

An example of the bad Wall Street would be someone like George Soros. These people are the financial hedge fund short-selling operators who make money by betting on company collapse, economic calamities and catastrophes.

Soros and his collaborators have an anti-capitalism agenda, an anti-industrialized nation agenda, and a far-left liberal, Marxist radical agenda. Most hedge fund short sellers are not capitalist. They are anti-capitalist and they are not investors. They are anti-investors. They succeed when companies (or countries) fail.

For the good Wall Street to make money, prices have to go up. In this way, everybody makes money, the companies and their shareholders make money, jobs are safe and secure, the economy grows, and the economy expands. This is capitalism in action. The action of the good Wall Street grows and expands the economy.

For the bad Wall Street to make money, prices have to go down, which means that companies and their investors have to lose money or even go broke and collapse.

The bad Wall Street is the hedge fund short sellers. They destroy companies, take away liquidity, destroy investor capital and slow down the economy.

The bad Wall Street, in the form of the hedge fund short sellers, engineered the economic collapse, looted every portfolio that had exposure to the stock market, and blamed George Bush and the Republicans, enabling Barack Obama and his backers, including Soros, to take power.

The hedge fund short sellers, who are members of the Managed Funds Association, are running our government today. They are the ones who authored the Dodd bill. The Dodd bill is punishing the victims of the Hedge Fund short sellers. The Dodd bill is punishing the good Wall Street.

Unless the truth about the role of the MFA in our government policies and regulations is revealed, and some courageous lawmakers free our economic system from their grip, the United States is in for a long time of hurt and possible bankruptcy.

George Soros is the leading member of the MFA. He is also the most influential and the most politically active member. He was behind Barack Obama’s election as President, he led the Managed Funds Association engineering of the economic collapse, as I covered in my book Wizards of Wall Street.

The Dodd bill does not mention anything about regulating the hedge fund short sellers. The Dodd financial reform bill punishes the victims and rewards the looting bandits and basically sets up the publicly traded companies, the shareholders and the American families to be victimized again. The Dodd bill doesn’t offer any protection for the invested capital and assets of the shareholders, but instead allows their wealth to be seized and confiscated by the Treasury Secretary and distributed to MFA members, the hedge fund short sellers.

This Dodd “financial reform” bill is just round two of the scam to defraud the publicly traded companies and their shareholders, all over again.

This Dodd bill represents the biggest effort so far by the hedge fund short sellers to have the government seal of approval, to cover their role in engineering the economic collapse which has ravaged the American economy

As I document in my book, The Wizards of Wall Street, [1] the problem, in essence, is that safeguard regulations which had been in place since 1938 to prevent a repeat of the stock market crash were repealed.

The measures I recommend address the root cause of the economic crisis. They are absolutely necessary to protect investors, the invested capital and the publicly traded companies who are at the heart of American capitalism. They are based on my own experiences in the financial markets and my historical analysis of what has worked in the past to prevent economic and financial catastrophes. They have worked and served us well for 72 years, until then-Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Christopher Cox removed them due to the lobbying influence of the Managed Funds Association, the hedge fund short sellers.

Some say the answer is some kind of financial transactions tax, perhaps on a global basis. But I say no. That will only hurt the common investors, retirement portfolios, ordinary Americans with investments in Mutual Funds and IRAs and their pensions and savings. The transaction tax is too exorbitant and is designed to further punish the victims of the crisis, the common investors, and the American families, and traps them for looting down the road. The financial transaction tax is designed as a major source of income redistribution for the Obama administration. This is not good for capitalism.

The socialists believe that to effectively control the people, you have to take away their money and control their wealth. This Dodd financial reform bill is filled with land mines and traps that will do just that.

All freedom lovers, all capitalists, and all patriotic Americans must say no to the Dodd bill. It does not address the cause of the financial crisis.

The Dodd bill will suppress business freedom and economic growth. It will work against the interests of Americans and their liberty.

The only financial reform needed today is to regulate and monitor the hedge funds and the hedge fund short sellers, some of them which are registered off-shore to avoid scrutiny. These global operators, with investors who remain mostly anonymous, must be compelled to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), publicly disclose their positions in the markets, and maintain accounting and trading records for a period of 10 years so their activities can be monitored and scrutinized. Just like mutual funds, they must be prohibited from engaging in day trading activities.

Many people do not realize that the hedge funds are responsible for 75-90 percent of all trading activities on Wall Street. They are responsible for the extreme market volatility. They are responsible for everything that is bad on Wall Street.

Other measures — and the most important measures which must be taken — include:

•Reinstate and restore the short sale price test regulation known as the uptick rule (to its original condition and not modified).
•End mark to market accounting and replace it with book value, historic cost accounting.
•Reinstate the “circuit breakers” and the trading curbs to kick in whenever the Dow Jones industrial average drops 150 points to reduce market volatility and massive panic sell-off in order to allow investors time to think before they act.
To fix the economic crisis, our lawmakers need to put everything back the way it was in 2006 before Christopher Cox became chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and started “fixing things” that were not broken. In short, every regulation that was repealed or watered down through the influence of the Managed Funds Association should be reversed to what it was before, with no exception.

By removing the rules and regulations that protected the capitalists and their shareholders over the years, the SEC left all of us vulnerable and susceptible to looting through unrestricted short selling by the hedge fund short sellers. That is how millions of ordinary Americans lost trillions of dollars in wealth.

The hedge fund short sellers looted $11 trillion from the U.S. economy. They walk away with all our invested capital and they walk away with the intrinsic profit from devalued home mortgages (our homes) through short selling. Yet, no one goes to jail. Why? Answer: they are too chummy with the Obama administration. The looters have been given a seat at the table in the White House. They are being protected by our government.

If they are left unchecked, the worst will be still to come. We will be witnessing the complete collapse of the capitalist system. And that means more profits for the hedge fund short sellers.

The collapse of the U.S. economy began in 2008 and is, as I state in my book Wizards of Wall Street, just the first phase of the plot to destroy capitalism and impose socialism on the American people.

The subsequent phases of the plot are now upon us, and are being implemented, beginning with the health care reform bill. The financial reform bill, the cap and trade bill, the card check bill, and the immigration reform bill are now on the agenda.

All of these “reform” bills are part of an orchestrated attack on freedom, liberty and justice. They have been written in order to transform America from capitalism to socialism — to dilute and change the political and economic structure of America.

All capitalists, all freedom lovers, all patriotic Americans must reject and say no to all the above listed reform bills, regardless of party affiliation. We do not want the tyranny of socialism.

As an immigrant who came to America to achieve success, I understand the stakes, perhaps more than most. This is a fight to save America, to save capitalism and protect us from the disaster of socialism.

I know that the liberals, who say they want to help the poor, think that the solution is socialism. But socialism never helps the poor; it only traps them indefinitely in poverty. You will never have a rags-to-riches story in a socialist economy. Liberation from poverty is only possible through capitalism.

The economic success of China did not come from socialism, but rather from capitalism.

The Chinese Communists authorize capitalist ventures to sustain socialism in their country. Without capitalism, socialism cannot survive.

It is the wealth generated from capitalism that sustains socialism. Socialism does not produce wealth, only capitalism does.

The only wealth associated with socialism is the wealth the socialists have stolen from the capitalists, through seizure, confiscation and redistribution of the capitalists’ wealth.

Once there is no more wealth left to seize, confiscate, or redistribute, socialism dies.

Socialism has a perfect record of failure.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-dodd-financial-reform-bill-lets-soros-off-the-hook/

 

[halik]

I don't disagree, but that's not quite the same thing as manipulation. Even if people were somehow manipulating the market Craig has still not prevented any compelling evidence that the Koch brothers have done so. He linked to a blog post that contained a graph that showed that their wealth increased dramatically and used a bunch half truths tied together with faulty logic to imply that they are wizards or something. The post was so dumb I'm not really sure what point it was trying to make.

Oh yeah, market makers and prop desks in that space don't make long term directional bets like that. If anything blame CTAs, hedge funds and institutional money. They're the ones pumping billions into that asset class.

 

[LegendKiller]

Your propaganda website purposely phrased as if Koch is engaging in something immoral when there is no proof.

1) It says Koch engages in the market but with a vague description of "buying and selling" speculative product that are increasingly contribute to the skyrocketing price of oil. Is your website dumb or what? Please show how both buying and selling speculative product contribute to increase of oil price. And if you don't have a clue how much they are buying or selling, how the heck do you know they contributed to the increase in price, if at all.

2) And then your website takes an investment notes from Goldman Sachs to their client that the market is over priced at that time and advise their client to take short position that Goldman Sachs "admits" there is "excessive speculation". Again, your website either try to twist the fact or is totally ignorant. That statement is just like any other investment advise, derivative or not, that something is over bought and time to sell. In fact, Oil drop $3.25 after Goldman made that notes and their client probably made good money taking short position because the market is out of wack.

3) Again, your slide shows Koch to be top 5 traders, which can either be hedging or speculative trader. But then in your post, they became the top 5 "speculator"

Seriously, can you show more bias and ignorance in your posts?

1) Considering they are a private company, we cannot determine how much they speculate vs. hedge. However, according to information, they speculate more than they hedge. The general trend is for massive amounts of money plowing into the futures markets, resulting in highly leveraged bets with very small margin requirements going into a market which can be manipulated easily by forward bullish calls from the likes of T. Boone Pickens, who, in fact, was on CNBC constantly in 07/08 calling for 200 oil.

2) Sure, Goldman said that, but what about when nobody was saying that and everybody was jumping on the oil train? At that time oil was skyrocketing when the market was, according to OPEC, "well supplied". Even OPEC has said that the market is STILL well supplied and that the price of oil reflects ~$20/bbl of speculative pricing. Goldman has said about the same.

3) What's the volume of their oil business? Indications are that they are more of an infrastructure company. While they do have a refinery business they don't control the top5 production in the country, indicating more than hedging.


Finally - to those who linked to the idiotic Koch Brothers funded paper, consider this. The main tenant of that paper was that speculated interest in oil would require that oil be taken off of the market through delivery. However, the vast majority of futures contracts, especially those where the individual doesn't want to take delivery, are settled on a net basis. This means that demand can be created out of thin air, supply can remain constant, and the demand doesn't even really result from actual demand. Thus, the leveraged gambling on oil creates far more demand than supply, throwing out the balance in the market. Further, at the expiry, nobody is delivering anything and a new market price is set. An ever increasing amount can be targeted in long-dated futures, as Halik already mentioned, which ultimately, once you tie in the pumpers, results in profitable trading for the speculators.

All of this sucks wealth from the bottom to the top as the market players are able to charge an ever expanding amount for a good that doesn't cost them nearly as much.

 

[spidey07]

Who's worse, Soros or Koch brothers?




http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-dodd-financial-reform-bill-lets-soros-off-the-hook/

Did we ever find out who made the 1 billion dollar short call/bet on US credit rating getting downgraded during the JUL/AUG debt "crisis".

 

[Jhhnn]

Why else do you think Soros spends the money?
Soros is a smart man. He knows how to grow his wealth and he leverages the "progressive" agenda to do it.

I'm trying to make sense out of that, but I don't think there's any to be made.

It's obvious how the Koch Bros' support for various thinktanks & institutes plus their lobbying effort advances their capitalist agenda- calling for less regulation, lower taxes at the top, less environmental protection. I get that.

What I don't get is how Soros' support for progressive causes promotes his own business interests at all. How does he gain from that? Demonstrate some mechanism whereby he does rather than just claiming it to be true, OK?

 

[Craig234]

Why else do you think Soros spends the money?
Soros is a smart man. He knows how to grow his wealth and he leverages the "progressive" agenda to do it.

Philanthropy, love of democracy, opposition to corruption, his 'good deed' all explain it.

Then again, it's clear you only post here to get laid. See how baseless assertion is useless?

 

[rchiu]

Vast majority of the money in commodities and main reason for the recent run up comes from institutional hedging of expected liabilities and/or portable alpha strategies (ie active management). There are billions of strictly long positions with CTAs working on behalf of money managers. Again those people are not speculators in the price-discovery sense; but rather are using the asset class as an investment vehicle.

Do you have any stats for that? Not saying you are wrong, but find it hard to believe investors would treat commodity like oil as an long term investment vehicle. Gold/Silver maybe, but oil is so politically tied it's hard to expect to have gradual return over time like most investor would want.

Most of the time oil is treated as hedging/risk management play, or short term speculative play because of it's highly volatile nature. That's why I am not sure if you would have strictly long positions on oil.

 

[halik]

Do you have any stats for that? Not saying you are wrong, but find it hard to believe investors would treat commodity like oil as an long term investment vehicle. Gold/Silver maybe, but oil is so politically tied it's hard to expect to have gradual return over time like most investor would want.

Most of the time oil is treated as hedging/risk management play, or short term speculative play because of it's highly volatile nature. That's why I am not sure if you would have strictly long positions on oil.

The last fund I worked for had ~3% allocation in commodities for 2011, 60B portfolio. Institutional money use commodities to hedge inflation of future liabilities (that are invariably tied to the price of said commodities). Compared to things like that, couple hundred mil hedge funds are drops in a bucket.

 

[Phokus]

Who's worse, Soros or Koch brothers?




http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-dodd-financial-reform-bill-lets-soros-off-the-hook/

LoL, what? Since when do so called capitalists come out against short selling? Short sellers (naked short sellers excluded, that's another issue) provide liquidity, can help prevent price bubbles from forming, provide a more efficient price discovery mechanism, etc. etc.

 

[cubby1223]

It's funny, the right is like a mindless hate machine who doesn't know why it hates

Not that I think you'll ever understand, but for tradition's sake...

When "progressives" go around being jackasses insulting everyone who thinks differently than they do, other people react in kind, treat you and the other big-name progressives as the jackasses you make yourselves out to be.

You cannot spend years on end calling anyone who doesn't like government spending, racist, or violent radical extremists, then expect those same people to believe your word on the Koch Bros.

You are a jackass. Keith Olbermann is a jackass. Rachel Maddow is a jackass. Nancy Pelosi is a jackass. Harry Reid is a jackass. Rosie O'Donnell is a jackass. Your favorite buddy Alan Grayson is an ultra-mega jackass. When you take on that role, you will always be immediately dismissed by a large percentage of people. I look at this group of names, and I say to myself I don't want to be anything like any of them.

For far too long, the prominent "progressive" voices out there have taken to exaggerated shock value to get their message across. And if you haven't learned by now this tactic does not work, then I'm sorry but there is little hope for you.


And don't fucking try to compare them to the usual conservative voices, because guess what! They don't persuade anyone of anything either.


You really have to ask yourself this - what is your goal in all of this? If it is to change people's minds, then you have been a total failure. If it is to make yourself sleep better at night knowing you pissed off "the other side", then you are nothing more than a jackass. Congratulations. Have a cookie

 

[Craig234]

Do you have any stats for that? Not saying you are wrong, but find it hard to believe investors would treat commodity like oil as an long term investment vehicle. Gold/Silver maybe, but oil is so politically tied it's hard to expect to have gradual return over time like most investor would want.

Most of the time oil is treated as hedging/risk management play, or short term speculative play because of it's highly volatile nature. That's why I am not sure if you would have strictly long positions on oil.

You don't seem to understand things like changing the rules for institutional investors. Also read this article, which discusses one of the futures markets, food:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis

It touches on everything from the explosion of investment money to the effect it had on the hungry people in the world, putting hundreds of millions into hunger for parisite profit.