John Paulson: Wall Street Visionary

Soros was so impressed by the efficiency of the money-making myth that he took the opportunity to buy dinner and ask Paulson for details of his bet against the housing market. Paulson, a junior two years ago, may not have imagined that he would have the chance in his life to be on a par with the financial giants.

"I don't want to celebrate when Americans are suffering."

Mr. Paulson, 51, is a native New Yorker, born and raised in the city's Queens district. Paulson has two younger sisters and a younger brother, and their family is not wealthy, probably in the lower middle class.

After studying at New York University and getting an M.B.A. from Harvard, Mr. Paulson went into finance, first at Odyssey Partners and then at Bear Stearns, where he headed mergers and acquisitions, before starting his hedge fund firm, Paulson &Co., in 1994.

Keep media away from encrypted emails

To become famous, people know little about Paulson - he is just a middle reaches of the fund company, and he is just a middle manager's performance is good, although he established hedge funds focused on merger arbitrage in 9 years eight years in the making money, the fund size of his company also from an initial $2 million into $500 million in 2002.

After Mr. Paulson became famous, the media went out of their way to find out more about him -- he rarely gave interviews, kept his personal life to himself, and even encrypted his emails so that others could not forward them. To his family, Paulson is known only as a married father of two daughters, and his interests include skiing, sailing, and running.

Of course, Paulson didn't forget to treat himself after his biggest annual salary in Wall Street history. His former 2,600-square-meter Fifth Avenue home, valued at $14.7 million, is up for sale, and he and his family have moved into a $40 million lakeside home in the city's eastern suburbs.

The pieced-together picture of Mr. Paulson is one of quiet calm. Even after becoming a Wall Street icon, he returned to his Manhattan office in a suit and tie early in the morning and still left around 6 p.m. to be home for dinner.

The only thing that has changed for Mr. Paulson is that it is much easier for his fund to attract investment money. In 2007 alone, investors added $6 billion to Paulson &Co., taking the fund's size from $1 billion to $7 billion. After 2007, with profits, Paulson &Co. has $28 billion in its hands, making it one of the largest hedge-fund firms in the world.

"I'm not a loan shark."

Mr. Paulson tried to play down his success, saying he did not want to celebrate it at a time when millions of Americans were suffering from the housing slump. To that end, he has donated $15 million to a research group called the Center for Reliable Lending, which provides legal assistance to families who cannot afford their mortgages. The center is lobbying Congress to allow eligible families to file for bankruptcy.

"We didn't make subprime loans, we didn't make loan sharks, but we know that a lot of families have been victimized in this crisis."

Paulson said a court-ordered bankruptcy of some families and a restructuring of their debts would be a good way to help them survive, "so that homeowners don't lose their homes and the government doesn't have to pay a lot of money." He said.

Even if one believes Mr. Paulson's intentions were good, and even if he had kept a low profile, he made an astronomical $3.7bn a year - more than $1.4m an hour at a 40-hour work week - at a time when almost 99 percent of the population suffered losses.

By comparison, U.S. authorities said the average hourly wage for Americans that year was $17.86. Put simply, it takes 80,756 Americans on average to earn as much as a Paulson -- it's hard not to make people jealous and resentful.

Social groups have accused Mr. Paulson of making "dirty" money from the crisis. "Profiting from people who lost their homes is not a good way to make money." Says Bruce Marks, director of Neighborhood Assistance USA.

Some newspapers dug up Paulson's mother and asked her to comment. The 81-year-old woman told reporters, "My son John is an important person, but I don't have much to say."