Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman calls for pay freeze in Congress to end government shutdown

Trista Kelley

January 25, 2019 1:05 PM

bill ackman

Billionaire and activist investor Bill Ackman took to Twitter to weigh in on the US government shutdown Friday.
Ackman called for members of Congress to have their pay stopped during the shutdown, saying such a policy would end government shutdowns.
It's an unusual move for Ackman, who has only tweeted 15 times since debuting on the social media site in June 2017.

Billionaire and activist investor Bill Ackman took to Twitter to weigh in on the US government shutdown, calling out Congress for getting paid while federal workers are not.

"Why should members of the Congress be paid while workers for the Federal government go unpaid? If we fixed this inequity, we would no longer have government shutdowns," Ackman, who heads hedge fund Pershing Square, tweeted to his 23,000 followers.

It's an unusual move for Ackman, who has only tweeted 15 times since debuting on the social media site in June 2017. Three of those tweets, from this week, include a link to CSPAN footage of a Colorado senator berating Ted Cruz.

It was a brutal year for hedge funds in 2018 Pershing Squarelost 10.8 percent in December and ended 2018 off 0.7 percent.

Before that, Pershing Square suffered years of losses and investor redemptions in part because of wrong-way bets on Valeant (long) and Herbalife (short).

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