"Pick on Someone Your Own Size!" The New York Times business section story today, Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays, addresses the fortunes of "[h]edge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile financial universe, [who] are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable, even in Wall Street's rarefied realms," mentions that the top 50 hedge fund managers last year earned a combined $29 billion, and goes on to quote William H. Gross, the chief investment officer of the bond fund Pimco: There is nothing wrong with it — it's not illegal... But it's ugly. Look, no one wants to make legitmate financial success illegal. But how galling would taxpayers find it to learn that these hedge fund managers paid a tax rate lower than or equal to all but the most destitute Americans? Well, it's true, thanks to the carried interest loophole allowing fund managers to claim their salary from commissions as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), rather than ordinary income (taxed at up to 35 percent). The loophole means top fund managers get tax breaks of hundreds of millions of dollars. Last year, the hedge fund managers' lobbyists blocked a bill in the Senate (it had passed in the House) to end this loophole, arguing that the bill unfairly singled out fund managers. Singled out? Perhaps. Unfairly? Perhaps. This is like Mike Tyson crying to Nancy Kerrigan, "Pick on Someone Your Own Size!"