In High Finance, Humming a Happy Tune

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


In High Finance, Humming a Happy Tune

The latest annual hedge fund industry pay stats have suits smiling — and ordinary mortals worrying about public education’s future.

By Sam Pizzigati


Pharrell Williams has reason to be happy. The singer and music producer has had the world’s hottest pop single over the past six months. His Happy has been topping the charts everywhere, from the United States to Lebanon and Bulgaria.

If this bouncy ditty keeps selling, Williams might even end up 2014 as happy as Taylor Swift, the most lavishly compensated musical artist in all of 2013. Swift took home $39.7 million for the year.

But Pharrell Williams, if he should hit that lofty mark, probably still wouldn’t be feeling nearly as tickled and giddy as the over 3,000 power suits who were swaying to his Happy last Monday.

Those suits — an assemblage that included most all the major domos of hedge fund America — were attending an annual high-powered investment conference in Manhattan. At the conference close, reports Businessweek, the attendees all rose as Happy’s infectious beat filled Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.

What had the hedgies so happy? The rest of us found out the next day. In 2013, the trade journal Alpha revealed, the hedge fund industry’s top 25 earners collected $21.15 billion, a whopping 50 percent over their total the year before. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/in-high-finance-humming-a-happy-tune/#sthash.VfNAU3TI.dpuf

[hobbit709]

1. What was that statement by Jesus about a camel and a needle?

[xchrom]

2. du rec.