Complaints from Billionaires
During another conversation, Cooperman mentioned that over the weekend an acquaintance had come by to get some friendly advice on managing his personal finances. He was a seventy-two-year-old world-renowned cardiologist; his wife was one of the country’s experts in women’s medicine. Together, they had a net worth of around ten million dollars. “It was shocking how tight he was going to be in retirement,” Cooperman said. “He needed four hundred thousand dollars a year to live on. He had a home in Florida, a home in New Jersey. He had certain habits he wanted to continue to pursue.
“I’m just saying that it’s not an impressive amount of capital for two people that were leading physicians for their entire work life,” Cooperman went on. “You know, I lost more today than they spent a lifetime accumulating.”
The New Yorker has a great piece about billionaires who feel victimized and vilified by President Obama. The story focuses on Leon Cooperman, a hedge fund founder who has compared the president to Hitler on more than one occasion.
Well, you have to understand the miserable treatment Leon Cooperman has endured under Obama. When Barack took office, Cooperman’s net worth was a whopping $1.0 billion, but after four years of violent class warfare and outright socialism, it’s dwindled to a mere… uh… $2.2 billion. Wait, what?
I guess under Romney he expects his net worth to triple, rather than just double?
@stuffisthings Actually I think he’s just jealous that the guy above him on the Forbes 400 is a Democrat.
“Our problem, frankly, is as long as the President remains anti-wealth, anti-business, anti-energy, anti-private-aviation, he will never get the business community behind him. The problem and the complication is the forty or fifty per cent of the country on the dole that support him.”
Actually, I think you’re the problem, Cooperman. A hypersensitive, over-entitled, completely callous human being with absolutely no perspective or sense of social responsibility.
“He needed four hundred thousand dollars a year to live on.”
Need – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
What’s the point of having fuck-you money if it doesn’t give you the confidence to truly not give a shit? I thought the whole point of having billions of dollars was that you didn’t care if the president said mean things about you… because you have billions of dollars!
@TheclaAndTheSeals Butthurt knows no tax bracket.
@highjump I will now forever think of these guys as the Butthurt Billionaires.
@LDW@twitter That is the perfect phrase to describe them.
“When he ran for President, he’d never worked a day in his life. Never held a job,” he said. Obama had, of course, worked—as a business researcher, a community organizer, a law professor, and an attorney at a law firm, not to mention an Illinois state legislator and a U.S. senator, before being elected President. But Cooperman was unimpressed. “He went into government service right out of Harvard,” he said. “He never made payroll. He’s never built anything.”
Haaaaaaa! Hahahaaa ha ha ha! Is this guy for real?
@dj pomegranate Obama doesn’t know how hard it is to shuffle money around in meaningless financial transactions. If Obama loved America, he would admit that this is the only definition of Real Work.
@MuffyStJohn
There is nothing more delusional than a paper pusher who thinks he “builds things” besides wealth for himself and his clients. Unless it’s the “job creators” of the 1% who haven’t hired anyone lately except perhaps a new pool cleaner.
@dj pomegranate It’s a common belief, somehow. The National Republican Congressional Committee has been faxing (ha!) a protest to CEOs that starts as an open letter to Obama saying, “Have you ever started a business? Have you ever personally met payroll? Have you ever gone without so you could pay employees? Have you ever managed cash flow? Have you ever had to comply with government over regulation? NO!”
Jason Kottke called the people in this article crybabies. I can’t put it better.
http://kottke.org/12/10/super-rich-private-equity-crybabies-vs-obama