Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I've written here, and in my earlier blog, about the "carried interest" tax loophole. Here is an example, for those who  enjoy hyperlinks.   And here is  another. There is something new to say about this aging subject, involving both Messrs Camp and Norquist. And a question about idiomatic American English. Before I get to any of that, though, a two-paragraph recap. Managers working with certain private funds [including but not solely hedge funds] receive much of their compensation in the form of a share of the profits of the fund they manage. The loophole in question is the fact that our tax law charges these managers at the capital gains rate, not the ordinary income rate, for that portion of their compensation. Periodic efforts to close this loophole have failed over a period of years for a number of reasons. Largely they fail because the issue seems a technical one, discussed in technical language, and that sort of thing can get talked to d...

Jason Kelly, in a recent book about the private equity industry, tells a story about a visit he made to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in November 2011. As you may remember, the “Occupy Wall Street” folks had taken over the park two months before and were seeking to focus public anger about “Wall Street,” both as a literal and as a metaphorical term.   When people think of “Wall Street” they think first of the big investment banks, the folks who received their much-discussed bail-outs in the fall of 2008. They don’t necessarily think of private equity: of Bain Capital, or Carlyle, or even Blackstone. But at least some portions of the Occupy movement wanted to change this. As Kelly was walking around the park he saw as sign that said, “No Bulls, No Bears, just Pigs.”   That was catchy: it played upon well-known animal metaphors for Wall Street optimists and pessimists respectively.  But he also saw a sign that was a good deal less catchy. It was made up of ora...