Renaissance Tech Founder Simons Gives $3.5 Million to Pro-Clinton Group

James Simons, the billionaire founder of Renaissance Technologies, donated $3.5m to Priorities USA Action, a super-PAC that’s aiding Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as an independent entity. Source: Renaissance Donations to Clinton He donated $13 million to support Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign, before jumping ship to back Hillary Clinton. Alternet

Simons has pumped more than $2 million into Clinton’s campaign to date. And his family office, Euclidean Capital, has poured more than $7 million into supporting Clinton. Guardian

Top US Hedge Fund Managers Made Nearly $13B in 2015

Institutional Investor's Alpha magazine said its annual look at the earnings of the leading hedge fund managers showed the 25 best-paid collectively took home nearly $13 billion in income.

The top two fund managers were Kenneth Griffin of the Citadel firm and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies, both of whom earned $1.7 billion in 2015.

Source: Simons Earns 1.7 bn

Aug. 3, 2015 10:38 p.m. ET... Citadel’s Ken Griffin Leaves 2008 Tumble Far Behind
Hedge-fund firm that nearly collapsed during the financial crisis is thriving again and expanding as aggressively as ever

On hedge-fund titan Kenneth Griffin’s 46th birthday last October, his firm paid former president Bill Clinton $250,000 to speak to investors and employees at the New York restaurant Daniel.

Citadel has a commodities operation that, as a stand-alone, would be one of the biggest commodities funds in the world. Its three-year-old effort to develop a new quantitative-trading arm, which uses complex mathematical formulas to pick investments, is approaching $3 billion under management and may soon be turned into a separate hedge fund.

More than 500 doomsday scenarios are constantly running, calculating how the portfolios would fare under a wide range of different upheavals, such as 1987’s “Black Monday” crash and the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Whenever the calculations show Citadel positions at risk of heavy losses if history repeats, red notices flash on trading screens across the organization. Source: Wall Street Journal

A bit deeper we find that Griffin is a main financial funder of Chicago Mayor Emmanuel... and one wonders about how shenanigans in Chicago's primary may have been rigged.

Citadel's billionaire owner, Kenneth C. Griffin, is accused of benefiting from a relationship with the mayor.

Mr. Emanuel’s single biggest donor, Mr. Griffin, 46, has given more than $1 million to political organizations that support the mayor. The bulk of that money — $950,000 — was donated in recent weeks after Mr. Emanuel failed to win majority support for a second term at the end of February.

Backing Mr. Emanuel, a former Democratic congressman and President Obama’s first White House chief of staff, may seem an unusual choice for Mr. Griffin... in 2012 Mr. Griffin said he considered himself a “Reagan Republican” and that he thought the rich have “insufficient influence” on the political process. : Wall Street Journal

In another headline, Citadel’s Ken Griffin Praises Wis. Gov. Scott Walker Bloomberg

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, [who supported Clinton in the Illinois primary], was at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella, where he worked for three years after leaving the Clinton White House. Daniel Widawsky, a former tax lawyer at Citadel, was appointed Chicago’s comptroller in 2013 by Mr. Emanuel.

Mr. Emanuel shut down 50 public schools in Chicago, polarizing some voters who said the move unfairly targeted low-income communities, Mr. Griffin argued that the mayor should have gone further. “The number should’ve been 125." NY Times

As Mr. Clinton’s former finance director, Mr. Emanuel held fundraisers for Ms. Clinton as early as 2014... Observer

In 2015, an investigation by The Guardian revealed the Chicago Police Department was running a secret interrogation and detention facility. In Homan Square, as the facility was called, Chicago police operated without any regard to basic constitutional rights. Those brought to Homan Square were rarely booked, rarely granted access to an attorney and often subjected to violent beatings by police officers.

Hillary Clinton proudly lists Mayor Rahm Emanuel as one of her leading mayoral endorsers,”

Video of Chicago Hunger Strike as last open enrollment public high school is closed. http://nyti.ms/1M8STQ4