Hedge Fund Managers Invest in Congress

From Politico:

John Paulson, one of the world’s richest hedge fund managers, has not been shy about spreading his wealth to Senate campaign coffers — or to the chairman of the committee that could directly affect his bottom line.

Paulson held a ritzy $1,000-per-head fundraiser for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd last year — and then maxed out his donation with $4,800 more for the Connecticut Democrat’s now-aborted reelection run.

Paulson is hardly alone.

According to a review of Federal Election Commission records, the nation’s 10 richest hedge fund managers have dumped nearly $1 million into campaign accounts over the past several years — with much of it going to senators who’ve given them a friendly reception on Capitol Hill.

And despite all the tough talk about a crackdown on Wall Street, consumer advocates and critics from other financial sectors say hedge funds would get off pretty easily under the regulatory reform bill Dodd’s committee approved last month — a charge Dodd’s aides reject.

Many hedge funds enjoyed an enormously profitable year in 2009, in part because of good bets that federal dollars would be used to rescue “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions. And the Top 25 earners made more than $25 billion last year, according to a recently released survey by Absolute Return + Alpha magazine.

Those Top 25 feature some familiar names in Capitol Hill’s fundraising quarters, including liberal investor George Soros, who earned $3.3 billion last year and has dropped $42,000 of his cash into Democratic campaigns in the past few years.

Read the whole thing here. As we reported, John Paulson invested $15 million in the Center for Responsible Lending, its largest single “gift” ever. An executive of that organization is now at the Treasury Department, helping to design the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. My, that’s handy for Paulson.