The Masters of the Universe on Wall Street would have us believe that they have attained their exorbitant wealth because of superior intellect and work ethic. Yet, time after time, they prove to us through behavior that could generously be described as ethically challenged that, in fact, they have not become Masters of the Universe by being smarter or harder working than the rest of us.

In fact, it seems that attaining Master of the Universe status requires a willingness to bite the hand that feeds you—to screw your customers and lobby against the interests of the very people whose interests you are being paid to serve.

Daniel Loeb, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Third Point LLC, is the latest Wall Street Master of the Universe to walk this path. His hedge fund manages $11.6 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of public pension funds.

Loeb has amassed a net worth of $1.5 billion, making him one of the 1,000 wealthiest people on the planet, from the fees he charges pension funds and other wealthy investors to manage their money. In 2012 alone, Loeb took home an estimated $380 million, making him one of the 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers of the year.

At the same time, Loeb sits on the board of StudentsFirstNY. StudentsFirstNY advocates scrapping the pension plans that provide stable retirement income for teachers and replacing them with 401(k) plans, a notoriously poor way to fund workers’ retirement.

Matt Taibbi described Loeb’s behavior in a recent blog for the Rolling Stone:

In other words, Loeb has been soliciting the retirement money of public workers, then turning right around and lobbying for those same workers to lose their benefits. He's essentially asking workers to pay for their own disenfranchisement (with Loeb getting his two-and-twenty cut, or whatever obscene percentage of their retirement monies he will charge as a fee). If that isn't the very definition of balls, I don't know what is.

When AFT President Randi Weingarten learned about Loeb’s activities, she invited Loeb to meet with her and some AFT pension fund trustees. Loeb responded that he was not aware of StudentsFirstNY’s advocacy for dismantling pension funds and that he is not an expert in the issue. Ultimately, Loeb declined to meet with Weingarten.

Weingarten summed it up best when she told Taibbi:

It is the height of hypocrisy to solicit the hard-earned retirement savings of teachers and turn around and use that money to advocate for the dismantlement of those very same plans.
Teachers continue to face a barrage of attacks, and the last thing they expect is that their pensions will be used to fund attacks on their profession, their unions, and their retirement savings.