Obama and the Hedge Fund Factor

If you were a member of the Wall Street aristocracy, one of those hedge fund hot shots who makes half a billion dollars a year, which horse would you bet on in the race for the White House?

Senator John McCain seems like the natural choice for the rich who are voting their wallets. After all, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, might help the wealthy keep more of their supersize incomes by making the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the two Democratic contenders, talk about getting tough on the rich. But at least Mrs. Clinton has a lot of old friends on Wall Street. Maybe she could figure out how to create a bubblicious economy like the one her husband presided over in the 1990s. Wall Street likes a good bubble.

And Mr. Obama? He backs something called the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, a measure that would limit all offshore accounts that the wealthiest hedge funds have set up. That's not something Wall Street wants.

And yet for all of this, many of the wealthiest hedge fund managers are lining up behind the Obama campaign.

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