Speaking of government, we forgot to mention: this federally insured tycoon is a libertarian.
Steve Feinberg, financier: Feinberg runs Cerberus Capital Management, which bought Chrysler in 2007 with some other investors and promised to restore it to profitability. Instead they declared bankruptcy and accepted federal bailout money for Chrysler Financial.
Cerberus also purchased a majority share of GMAC in 2006 and accepted federal bailout money for it, too (after the Fed bent the rules and declared it a bank holding company).
Then there are the guns. Cerberus purchased Bushmaster Firearms International, Remington Arms, and several other firearms companies, and merged them all into an entity called the "Freedom Group." It took an investor revolt to make Cerberus promise to unload these holdings after Bushmaster's AR-15 was used to kill a number of small children in the Sandy Hook shootings. (It later reneged, saying it couldn't find a buyer.)
Cerberus also promised to stay out of the gun debate, but two years after Sandy Hook its executives were funding anti-gun control ads -- in Connecticut, where the kindergarten massacre occurred.
Feinberg is a major Republican donor. He now says he regrets naming his firm for the three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell.
Steven Mnuchin, financier/film producer: Mnuchin's investment group "bailed out" a housing lender in California and renamed it OneWest. OneWest, where Mnuchin became CEO, has been strongly criticized for its foreclosure practices.
The California Reinvestment Coalition has called on authorities to investigate OneWest's apparent pattern of racial discrimination in foreclosures. It also cited its abusive "foreclosures of widows," which makes it morally indistinguishable from countless silent-movie villains.
On the plus side, Mnuchin was an executive producer on "Mad Max: Fury Road."
Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil billionaire: Hamm is, among other things, a fracker with extensive holdings in the Bakken Formation.
Bloomberg News reports that Hamm attempted to have some earthquake researchers fired from the University of Oklahoma, where he's a major donor, because they were investigating the connection between the oil and gas industry and Oklahoma's "nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes."
Hamm, who is reportedly worth $11.3 billion, was cited as one of the executives urging Mitt Romney to turn federal lands over to states for oil and gas exploitation.
Believe it or not, this fracker is reportedly under consideration for the job of Energy Secretary in a Trump Administration.
John Paulson, hedge funder: Paulson made billions using credit default swaps to bet against subprime mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. That's no crime, and Paulson guessed right -- although it did lead to labels like "the hedge funder who bet against America."
Paulson's actions reinforce the idea that today's hedge funds are economically harmful entities. It's fine for an airline to hedge against the price of oil to protect its bottom line. But it's hard to see how the bets made by today's hedge funds help the economy. They are destructive when they lead to market manipulation or the entrapment of unwary investors.
Speaking of which: Paulson went to Goldman Sachs in 2006 and said he wanted to bet against subprime mortgages. Goldman needed a buyer for those investments, which were then packaged as a "collateralized debt obligation" or "CDO" called "Abacus." It did not reveal that Paulson had shorted them by more than $1 billion. (Summaries here and here.)
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