Marco Rubio & Paul Singer BFF

Paul Singer is the CEO of Elliott Asset Management. Singer once told a room of 325 hedge fund managers to buy naked credit default swaps. The swaps are used as insurance against mortgage-backed securities. For example: if BP bought swaps to insure themselves against the Deep Horizon rig not generating oil revenue; the value of the swaps would increase. The financial industry got credit swap crazy. AIG could not pay for $440 billion in CDS. Singer did better. Elliott Asset Management used CDS to bet on the housing market to falter.

Nothing was more predictable, in Singer's view, than the collapse of the market for mortgage-backed bonds. ``One powerful measure of attractiveness of a trade is when there is the potential to make outsized gains for very little risk,'' he says.

Singer has earned the label as the King of vulture funds. Singer will buy bonds from poor countries knowing these nations will have a difficult time paying. Singer's company bought $10 million in bonds from the the Republic of Congo. Singer sued the Republic of Congo for $400 million. A settlement of $127 million was reached.

Singer was also one of the financial backers behind the Swift Boat attacks against Sen. John Kerry. Unsurprisingly, Singer avoids interviews and being photographs. Singer does make friends. His new BFF is Senate candidate Marco Rubio. Singer held a glitzy New York City fundraiser for Rubio and other Republicans. It is nice to know Rubio is a pal with a man who made money off of the housing market crash.