Fanning the flames of class warfare, ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" focused on hedge fund managers' pay on April 24.
"Some of them made a lot, I mean really a lot," said anchor Charles Gibson.
While the report by John Berman focused on the high pay -- the top fund manager James Simons made $1.7 billion last year -- but left out reasons for high compensation as well as the high taxes that certainly accompany such incomes.
Together the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a combined $14 billion last year according to Alpha magazine. Berman compared the figure to teachers pay saying it was "enough to pay New York City's 80,000 teachers for 3 years." Sure, at a tax rate of 100 percent.
Berman did not explain that compensation depends on "how much money the firm has in assets" or the firm's performance for investors.
Instead "World News" went shopping to see if a billion could be spent.
"It turns out a billion dollars is hard to spend," said Berman.
"It does boggle doesn't it," Gibson responded to end the segment.
