Crisis ! What crisis ?

While the daily media's bombardments are telling us the end of the world is near, but there are some people out there who are quietly sniggering their way to the banks during the current crisis. Alpha magazine recently listed the top earning hedge funds managers who averagely took home USD460 millions. 4 of them took 1 billions. Since the magazine started this list, this is their 3rd best year of performance.

Rank	Name	Firm Name	2008 Earnings
1	James Simons	Renaissance Technologies Corp.	$2.5 billion
2	John Paulson	Paulson & Co.	$2 billion
3	John Arnold	Centaurus Energy	$1.5 billion
4	George Soros	Soros Fund Management	$1.1 billion
5	Raymond Dalio	Bridgewater Associates	$780 million
6	Bruce Kovner	Caxton Associates	$640 million
7	David Shaw	D.E. Shaw & Co.	$275 million
8	Stanley Druckenmiller	Duquesne Capital Management	$260 million
9 (tie)	David Harding	Winton Capital Management	$250 million
9 (tie)	Alan Howard	Brevan Howard Asset Management	$250 million
9 (tie)	John Taylor Jr.	FX Concepts	$250 million