Are Hedge Fund Managers Really This Dense?

      Just read the New Republic piece by Alec MacGillis (pg 10) about the relationship between hedge fund managers and Obama as one former Obama Administration official puts it, "They hate him now."

      It's very interesting in explaining something hard to understand-why the hedge fund manager community-I know its a little funny referring to them as a community, but like any community they have gotten themselves very offended-have such a martyr complex about Obama's supposed abuse of them-some have gone as far as kvetching "Should we be like a battered wife and say though the President beats us that proves he loves us?"

    In a CNBC interview Anthony Scaramucci head of Skybridge Capital, regular CNBC contributor-and former fellow classmates at Harvard-they used to play basketball together at Harvard complained that he and his friends in finance have felt like a pinata. Maybe you don't feel you're whacking us with a stick, but we certainly feel we've been whacked with a stick."

    As Obama truly said in response is that there's probably a big chunk of the country that thinks I've been too soft on Wall Street. That's probably the majority not the minority."

    It certainly is. I've never been able to get how these guys just don't get it. Do they not see that the country has been suffering, that while many of them continued to make record profits, there are all these Americans in desperate straits?

    It turns out they really are clueless. A former Democratic fundraiser puts it this way:

    "What Obama didn't understand was that he couldn't play an inside-outside game-tell them on the one had, 'We don't hate you but the politics are what the politics are'...    These people really freaked out about being villianized.

      Orin Kramer of Boston Provider-the fund manager that is still most loyal to Obama observes drily: "There are people in the world of finance who have a limited understanding of the national mood."

     I never got how these guys, who are supposed to be so smart and so sophisticated can't get this, that they are really that offended because Obama once called them "fat cats" and a few other outrages like going after "carried interest."

    To tell you the truth, I'm a big liberal Democrat of course but I really don't hate Wall St. per se-I never have. MacGriffin makes the point that these guys feel like what they do for society has been denigrated-they see themselves as good guys who benefit the economy.  So they let their little feelings get hurt.

   Many do hate them. I never have really-I'm a liberal not a populist, there's an important difference. Like for instance I saw the whole furor over the AIG bonuses as over the top and overdone But I got to say that this article has made me lose some respect for them. They should be able to understand an inside-outside game. As they can't they aren't nearly as sophisticated as they like to think they are.