So long, suckers. Millionaire hedge fund boss thanks 'idiot' traders and retires at 37.

The boss of a successful US hedge fund has announced his retirement with a letter which states that his rivals were over-privileged "idiots" who helped to make him rich.

Andrew Lahde's $80m Los Angeles-based firm Lahde Capital Management in Los Angeles made a huge return last year by betting against subprime mortgages.

Yesterday the 37-year-old told his clients that he had hated the business and had only been in it for the money. And after declaring he would no longer manage money for other people, because he had enough of his own, Lahde said that instead he intended to repair his stress-damaged health; he made it clear he would not miss the financial world.

"The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he wrote. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government," he said.

"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

It's hard, in the middle of the current financial crisis, to kid oneself that any of these bankers has a clue what they are actually doing.

What's really unusual is that Andrew Lahde has had the courage to state what many of us have long suspected; these overpaid morons don't know what they are doing and they aren't worth the obscene salaries that they claim.

Nor do they appear to know when it is time to stop feeding at the trough:

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.

Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.

Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements.

Even in the middle of the present crisis they are still awarding themselves "discretionary bonuses". That's not only greedy and distasteful, it's actually moronic.

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Tags: Andrew Lahde, Wall Street, Financial Crisis