Hedging on Democrats
Quick post to assuage Thomas before getting back to work: I saw an interesting tidbit on NYTimes.com about how hedge funds have contributed a lot of money to Democrats. The survey does exclude donations to 527's, so it doesn't represent the full spectrum of political giving, but it's still interesting to see an relatively lightly regulated financial business donating to Democrats at a time when they are not in power anywhere and when you have people like Tom DeLay trying to squeeze out lobbying to anyone but his loyal Republicans.
In the comments of the article, people were speculating as to why they gave to Democrats. Social conscience? Questionable. Buying access and influence? For what purpose, Democrats don't have any power right now. Because the Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility? Maybe, but still doubtful. If I had to guess, I'd probably say that they're doing what they do well, hedging their bets against future events. They're also giving to Republicans, but, Tom DeLay's efforts aside, it never hurts to have friends on both sides of the aisle.
posted by Dan Craig @ 2:53 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
A suprising number of big hedge fund peopler are in fact dyed-in-the-wool dems (see Soros, George). Maybe Soros is the cause of this in addition to being the best known example. By my reasoning, the theory (among HF managers) would go: if Soros gives big to dems, and he is richer than I am, then i should give big to dems. Wall Street (at least the trading part) as a whole is becoming much more liberal (based on the subset of people that I know in it at least). Some possible theories why: 1. they live in NYC which is very liberal; 2. Upper-middle-class (er...ok...Upper-class) guilt; 3. As people who manage money, generally being p'd that our house isn't in order. Also, I get really annoyed that we don't have a good short-hand like "the GOP"...I don't like spelling out Democrats, and I think Dems is a pale imitation at best.
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