“In a stroke of brilliant financial maneuvering Lone Star bundled some of the mortgages into bonds and sold them to investors, immediately booking large profits… ‘Lone Star has bought these loans at a discount from the government–-in effect, they got principal reduction. But they are not passing this benefit on to homeowners or communities,’ says Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.
“Hedge funds were major traffickers in the toxic securities that brought down the financial system eight years ago. Because many of them now market aggressively to pension funds and institutional investors, ordinary retirement savers can lose big when hedge funds fail to generate returns extravagant enough to justify their extravagant charges. More and more of these funds use stealth tactics to build up potent but undetected market positions, enabling them to aggressively bring about the results they’re seeking — results that serve their interests at the consistent expense of workers, communities, and the wider society.”