In Giuliani Campaign's Dirty Secret, CoolAqua focuses on Greg Palast's investigative work into vulture funds.
Vulture funds - as defined by the International Monetary Fund and Gordon Brown amongst others - are companies which buy up the debt of poor nations cheaply when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest - which might be ten times what they paid for it.
Take a half hour or so to learn about these funds, who's involved and what impact this practice has on the citizens on poorer nations.
One strategy of the vulture funds is to spend huge sums on lobbying and contributing to political campaigns. Billionaiare Paul Singer invented the vulture fund. He was also the largest donor to the Bush campaign and has pledged 15 Million to Rudi Guiliani.
Debt Advisory International manages several vulture funds. Its founder is Virginian, Michael Sheehan. DAI hired and paid $280,000 to lobbyist firm Greenberg Traurig, Jack Abramoff's former employer.
If you find this stuff tedious, try this video for a more engaging format.
Nice work, Greg Palast, but where are our investigative reporters?
Singer, Republicans' Soros, May Top Hedge-Fund Campaign GiversBy Michael Forsythe
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- George Soros became the king of hedge-fund political donors when he spent $27 million last year trying to defeat President George W. Bush. Paul Singer may usurp the throne for next year's congressional elections.
Singer, founder of Elliott Associates LP, and 11 employees at his New York-based hedge fund have raised more money for candidates this year than any other fund, and more than twice as much as second-ranked Soros Fund Management, Federal Election Commission records show. In contrast to Soros, almost all of the Elliott money has gone to Republicans.
Elliott's political activism has chipped away at Democrats' pre-eminence in raising money from hedge funds and underscored the industry's potential to the political parties. Elliott, which manages $5.5 billion and has fewer than 500 employees, donates about as much as investment banks such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which had 19,600 employees at the end of 2004.
``From the Republican side, that's an important group for us to reach out to that we'd love to have more support from,'' said Jason Miller, the campaign manager for Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, the biggest recipient of donations from Elliott employees. ****
For the 2004 elections, Elliott employees were the second- biggest donors to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a group headed by Allen that year that helped boost the Republican majority in the 100-member Senate by four seats, to 55.
One name appears throughout the document: Paul Singer, a discreet hedge-fund tycoon who has been described as the Republican George Soros. He was one of George Bush's most important financial supporters in 2004, a donor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and a prominent backer of an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan, according to campaign finance and press reports.Singer is listed as heading the campaign's effort to raise cash from hedge-fund donors, and as playing a central role in recruiting other contributors. He also has apparently been given the sensitive task of recruiting family members of victims and survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks to Giuliani's campaign. One note in the handwritten memo, apparently a task for Giuliani aide Denny Young, reads: "9/11 groups for PS to contact." Paul Singer is the only member of Giuliani's team with those initials.
And what a small world it is. Singer is identified as a key backer of a 527 group called Progress for America which ran ads for Bush and also for Social Security privatization. http://www.dkosopedi...
One of Progress for America's consultants was Chris LaCivita.