George Soros: Tea Partier?

The big profits made by some of Wall Street’s leading banks are “hidden gifts” from the state, and taxpayer resentment of such companies is “justified”, George Soros, the fund manager, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers,” Mr Soros said. “These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government, so I don’t think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses. There’s a resentment which I think is justified.”

Far from the unbridled capitalism run-amok model that statists love to portray Wall St., it appears that federal oversight and regulation has only enhanced the crony capitalism model as the prism through which we view the matter.

As such, the Wall Street bonuses dust-up represents an interesting convergence of liberal and conservative-based populist anger. B-Daddy has some thoughts on all this, here.