What Industry owns your state

[JeffreyS]

[simms3]

I get what this map is saying, about campaign contribution sources and all, but...

CA - finance?  I'm in SF, the financial hub of the west, the land of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, Schwab, Visa, and others, AND I work in the financial sector myself, BUT finance far from owns the state.  More like Big Entertainment in SoCal and Big Tech in NorCal, and CA can very well be two states.  Depends on their definition of finance - is my company a financial firm or a real estate firm?  Many banks own/operate hedge funds and private equity funds that acquire and asset manage real estate.

Cases in point:

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs all operate private equity fund shops that rank in the top 50 of all private equity real estate investors.

Other major "diversified" equity groups such as Carlyle, Blackstone, Fortress, Cerberus, GE Capital, Invesco, and others are all amongst the top 50 equity fund shops as well (in addition to owning, buying, financing, etc many of our favorite companies).

Then there are the major hedge funds that buy real estate, such as Baupost, JP Morgan Asset Management, Blackrock Advisors, Angelo Gordon, Farallon, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Canyon Partners, Och Ziff, and Paulson & Co.

Are these financial sector firms, or real estate firms?  Many are based in San Francisco, and conversely many are backing some of the largest and/or fastest growing tech/social media/biotech firms in the country.  So how does one classify these guys?  If tech is the industry that is driving both finance and real estate, but the financiers who are dependent on tech are writing the largest political contributions, is it the financiers controlling the state or really tech?  And of course it's Entertainment and some tech down down in SoCal.

Looking at other states as well I'd say this map is pretty inaccurate.