Hedge fund and pension fund managers do very different work, though I have to admit I picked that particular profession because it's become sort of an icon for the .01% at the pinnacle of the oligarchy. They're the purest of Wall Street capitalists, the ones whose funds protect other funds, and whose daily activities never touch the material world. They're derivative people.

As I understand it, most of that huge amount of money in pensions is managed by very large funds, like CalPERS, who manage their own investments. They manage a fund on behalf of an army of small investors, so I guess if there's any moral judgment here, it's just that the money managers who serve lots of "little people" have cleaner hands than servants of the hyperwealthy elite. The hands of hedge fund managers aren't unclean from the money they both touch, but from the clients they serve. Money only has a moral dimension when you look at how it's used.

Kind of like the moral dimension of the stock market. What's the morality of that nominally benign pension fund owning an arms manufacturer? Not a hypothetical question, remembering back to the days of South African apartheid, and the successful pressure on pension funds and trust to get rid of their investments in the country. Public pressure forced the money managers to concede that money isn't purely abstract and objective, and that it does have a moral dimension. At least, to concede that in public. I don't think we should ever let up the pressure to contain capitalism within civilized bounds and keep it on the straight and narrow.

Sad how nowadays that sort of talk will get me labelled a socialist, when once upon a time it was centrist. But I can live with that.