Paul Singer

Billionaire investor Paul Singer is the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation and an important backer of rightwing "pro-Israel" advocacy in the United States. He has used some of his fortune to finance a host of Republican, neoconservative, and more traditionally philanthropic causes. "Depending on your view of campaign finance," observed a writer for the Washington Post, "he's either an activist donor, or an example of how campaign finance has gotten out of hand."

Paul Singer

Hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer is coming out of the shadows. A philanthropist and Republican political donor whose name was known only to insiders, Singer is now moving to the front row both in politics and in Jewish life.

While much of the public attention in the GOP race has been directed at Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, Republican candidates also courted Singer for his generous support, and the New York-based businessman recently announced he will back Marco Rubio for the GOP nomination.
Singer, founder of Elliott Management, made his fortune by buying distressed debts and selling them for higher value, including debts of cash-strapped nations such as Argentina.

Singer, 71, has been a longtime supporter of hawkish pro-Israel causes and is one of the major funders of the conservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. During the debate over the Iranian nuclear deal, Singer used his fortune to support opponents of the agreement, including by founding an anti-deal Christian group.

This Vulture-Fund Billionaire Is the GOP's Go-To Guy on Wall Street

When Republicans make their pilgrimages to Wall Street for money to help take back the Senate next year, there may be no hotter ticket than a party at Paul Singer's. The 69-year-old hedge fund billionaire's co-op apartment at the Beresford, a hulking Italian Renaissance building on Central Park West whose celebrity residents have included Jerry Seinfeld, Glenn Close, and Helen Gurley Brown, can draw scads of high-finance players. The haul for a dinner event has been known to run to $1.4 million, and Singer himself has no trouble writing a $1 million check to a super-PAC. He's been described as a "fundraising terrorist" for his persistence in twisting arms, a skill that has helped drive a major strategic shift among Big Finance donors, who favored Obama in 2008 but now overwhelmingly back the GOP.

Here’s why Paul Singer’s endorsement of Rubio matters

For months, a group of high-rolling Republican donors with considerable resources to pour into super PACs or political nonprofits were undecided about which White House candidate to support with their millions. But that’s finally changing, in no small part due to billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer‘s announcement last weekend that he’s backing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Singer’s decision could bring some unity to the prominent financier class that has already given 39.2 percent of all contributions to outside spending groups like super PACs this cycle. After all, it may have before.

For Neocon Megadonor Paul Singer, Israel Trumps Gay Rights

If you had to narrow down Republican megadonor Paul Singer’s three main causes, the list would probably look like this: deregulating the market, pushing a hawkish outlook on the Middle East, and, surprisingly for such a staunch conservative, supporting pro-gay marriage stance. In the 2016 presidential race, though, Singer seems to have abandoned the last of the three—and apparent fissures are opening up with other pro-gay Republicans.

Last month, Singer anointed Marco Rubio as his chosen GOP contender. No doubt the millions that Singer is known for dumping into political causes will follow in short order. Rubio certainly embraces the first two points of Singer’s agenda: he expresses a neoconservative-tinged view of the Middle East and has proposed steps to gut regulation of American businesses.

But on the third issue—gay rights—Rubio is an ill fit. In fact, it’s worse: Rubio is a retrograde anti-gay politician. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s dossier, he opposes a raft of gay rights positions, going well beyond simple opposition to gay marriage. Rubio is against discrimination protections for LGBT Americans and allowing LGBT parents to adopt children.

The Vulture: Chewing Argentina’s Living Corpse

A call came in from New York to my bosses at BBC Television Centre, London. It was from one of the knuckle- draggers on the payroll of billionaire Paul Singer, Number One funder for the Republican Party in New York, million-dollar donor to the Mitt Romney super-PAC, and top money-giver to the GOP Senate campaign fund. But better known to us as Singer The Vulture.

“We have a file on Greg Palast.”

Well, of course they do.

And I have a file on them.

I had just returned from traveling up the Congo River for BBC and the Guardian. Singer’s enforcer indicated that Mr. Singer would prefer BBC not run a story about him— especially not with film of his suffering prey: children, cholera victims.

Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza

Mitt Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout has haunted him on the campaign trail, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio. There, in September, the Obama campaign launched television ads blasting Romney’s November 2008 New York Times op-ed, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But Romney has done a good job of concealing, until now, the fact that he and his wife, Ann, personally gained at least $15.3 million from the bailout—and a few of Romney’s most important Wall Street donors made more than $4 billion. Their gains, and the Romneys’, were astronomical—more than 3,000 percent on their investment.

It all starts with Delphi Automotive, a former General Motors subsidiary whose auto parts remain essential to GM’s production lines. No bailout of GM—or Chrysler, for that matter—could have been successful without saving Delphi. So, in addition to making massive loans to automakers in 2009, the federal government sent, directly or indirectly, more than $12.9 billion to Delphi—and to the hedge funds that had gained control over it.

One of the hedge funds profiting from that bailout—
$1.28 billion so far—is Elliott Management, directed by 
Paul Singer. According to The Wall Street Journal, Singer has given more to support GOP candidates—$2.3 million—than anyone else on Wall Street this election season. His personal giving is matched by that of his colleagues at Elliott; collectively, they have donated $3.4 million to help elect Republicans this season, while giving only $1,650 to Democrats. And Singer is influential with the GOP presidential candidate; he’s not only an informal adviser but, according to the Journal, his support was critical in helping push Representative Paul Ryan onto the ticket.

Why Has Vulture Fund King Paul Singer, Picked Rubio To Be President?

It was treated as huge news Friday evening when Nick Confessore and Maggie Haberman reported that Paul Singer has decided to back Marco Rubio. The media made such a big deal out of it because Singer is one of the biggest financiers of right-wing politics in America. He's contributed many millions of dollars to advance the Republican Party agenda, handing out 6 and 7-figure PAC checks the way normal people might give a $20 contribution through ActBlue (always a mitzvah). He also gives max donations to right-wing candidates, from outright crackpots like Joni Ernst (R-IA) to relatively mainstream conservatives like McCain. And he invested early and heavily in Paul Ryan; he was Ryan's biggest single donor in the 2012 cycle.

Journalists Funded By ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests

The campaign to marginalize and destroy the growing 99 Percent Movement is in full swing, with many in the media attempting to smear the people participating in the “occupation” protests across the country. However, several of the so-called journalists deriding, and in some cases sabotaging the movement, have paychecks thanks to a billionaire whose business practices have been scorned as among the worst of the financial elite.
As the New York Times has documented, Paul Singer, a Republican activist and hedge fund manager worth over $900 million, has emerged as one of the most important power brokers within the GOP. Now, it appears that the reporters financed by Singer are at the forefront of efforts to tarnish the reputation of 99 Percent Movement demonstrators:

Journalist Who Admitted To Infiltrating Protests To ‘Mock And Undermine’ The Movement Works For A Singer-Supported Right-Wing Magazine. In a column posted last night, reporter Patrick Howley admitted that he had surreptitiously joined an anti-war spin-off group from the OccupyDC protests that planned to demonstrate at a military drone exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum. Howley wrote that he “infiltrated” the action and sprinted into the police along with a few protesters in order to “mock and undermine” the movement. Singer is a major donor to the Spectator, a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton.

Journalist Pushing To Discredit Occupy Wall Street Is Funded By Singer’s Think Tank. Josh Barro, a journalist who has attacked the 99 Percent Movement in the National Review and the New York Daily News, draws a salary from the Wriston Fellowship at the Manhattan Institute, a big business advocacy think tank in New York. Barro makes the same tired arguments, that anti-Wall Street protesters are too inarticulate and “extreme” to be taken seriously. Singer is the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, and even oversees the Wriston annual fundraiser.

Billionaire Vulture Paul Singer Has Been Bribing Rubio To Help His Corrupt Business For Quite Some Time

Sunday started off with an explanation of the connection between Marco Rubio and vulture investor Paul Singer, who is now trying– along with several other slimy billionaires– to buy Rubio the white House. (Don't worry… Ted Cruz has his own equally horrid billionaires trying to buy the presidency for him.) Everyone more or less assumed that Singer was willing to invest heavily in Rubio because of their shared virulent Zionism and because of Rubio's consistent pledges to drastically lower taxes on billionaires, coupled with his perceived electability. But then Jonathan Marshall, writing for ConsortiumNews reported a key element most reporters have missed, not that the Singer's embrace signals an establishment shift away from Jeb, but that “Rubio earned that affection by advancing Singer’s high-stakes financial fight with Argentina.”

Marshall points out Rubio's “political support for Singer’s efforts to drain more than $1.5 billion dollars from Argentina in payments on old bonds that lost most of their value after the country defaulted in 2001.” In the Sunday discussion of Singer's corruption, we mentioned how he bribed GOP congressman Michael “Mikey Suits” Grimm with $38,000 to get him to use his congressional office to extort Argentina. Grimm is in prison for other (unrelated) corrupt practices but he isn't the only Republican who helped Singer with his disgraceful vulture operation against Argentina.

Funk Paul Singer.