Crisis, patrimonialism, and the spirit of finance capitalism : White men's dominance in the US hedge fund industry

Hedge funds have a track record of profiting on stock market crashes and sociopolitical crises. In 2008, hedge fund managers made billions betting that the US housing bubble would burst (Lewis 2011). Despite the fact that hedge funds contributed to bringing about the crisis (Lysandrou 2011) and profited from it, investors entrusted even more money to them, in response to the US government interventions in the failing investment banks (IMF 2014). [...] How did these private financial firms come to control so much power and might in the United States?