A quick thought. Deregulation helped to build the hedge funds. I don't know exactly what I'm talking about re financial issues, but I have the impression that the hedge funds took over from the investment banks as the great lakes of finance and investment capital because they could do their highly-leveraged voodoo behind the hedge. Unscrutinized, unaccountable. Well now that is about to change.
But I wonder how many of the engines of neoconservatism made their money in this manner. Of course I mean Bruce Kovner, a very private man who has erected high berms around portions of his beautiful Dutchess estate either for drainage purposes or to keep out the nosy Phil Weisses of the world. He has Caxton, a hedge fund, and is the chairman of Juilliard and the American Enterprise Institute. He is said to have had political ambition till there was an SEC investigation of some financial brilliance he was engaged in years ago. But I don't mean to single Kovner out. Michael Steinhardt is a hedge funder, I think Roger Hertog is too, the backers of the New Republic. I'm sure there are others.
I'm speculating (!) that the secrecy that invested the hedge funds carried over to the neoconservative political ideology these men funded. And so the Bill Kristols and David Frums of the world did not feel that they owed personal transparency to the world. I always compare Kristol's father's and uncle's openness about their Jewishness in their politics to the subterfuge that Kristol engages in. In that link he seems paranoid about such exposure. Frum has radiated the same vibe at times. Everyone says, well that's Straussian. Maybe it's hedgeian.
