Those seeking an example of the usefulness of private money in politics might start in Arizona, where for years a "clean-election" law ensured that fringe candidates received handsome state funding.
Those securities can now be found generating handsome returns for pension funds, mutual funds, banks, brokerage houses, insurance carriers, hedge funds and even some individual investors.
In addition to handsome paydays, hedge funds want to diversify their ownership base, in part to find a more stable supply of capital.
Fannie Ward is Edith, a spendthrift society lady who gambles with her charity funds, and handsome Sessue Hayakawa is the mysteriously wealthy neighbour she turns to in her hour of need.
Starting with the simple premise that a company's value lies in its ability to generate free cash flow, Welsh has reaped handsome profits for his funds' shareholders.
And stock by stock, his fund has built handsome returns.
Lady Carbury, a financially anxious widow of forty-three, sets out on a literary career to fund her handsome, good-for-nothing son's prospects of marrying an heiress (first target: Marie Melmotte).
Merrill's brokers also sold tens of billions of dollars of proprietary mutual funds, which generated handsome management fees, and they sold funds managed by other companies.
So the government's decision on hunting could make the difference between further handsome support for its party funds or opposition from a determined and deep-pocketed lobby.The fox-hunting ban still has to be pushed through Parliament.
In reality, what Mr. Cook was running was a plain-vanilla Ponzi scheme, in which he simply used money from new investors to pay off earlier investors and maintain the mirage that his funds were earning handsome returns.
