“We are a multi-strategy hedge fund. Amaranth’s investment professionals deploy capital in a broad spectrum of alternative investment and trading strategies in a highly disciplined, risk-controlled manner.” So boasted the Web site of the Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund Amaranth Group, the same group whose “highly disciplined, risk-controlled” 32-year-old, Ferrari-driving trader — who for a while was supervised by a former Enron employee — this month reported it lost $5 billion of the fund’s $9 billion in one week.

The Amaranth aftermath is of interest to us for it illuminates how the croupier class has emerged as an important part of what Eisenhower might have called a financial-political complex. It’s a web of mutually beneficial relationships in which the politicians investigate the businessmen, the politicians shake down the businessmen for contributions, the businessmen give to the politicians, the politicians invest government money with the businessmen, and the businessmen help out the politicians.

Feature William Gates, whose Microsoft Corporation was prosecuted by President Clinton’s Justice Department, fetching up here this week at Mr. Clinton’s “Global Initiative.” Feature the gubernatorial campaign of the bane of Wall Street, Eliot Spitzer, kicking off its general election effort by announcing the formation of a committee of “Corporate Leaders for Spitzer.” Feature the chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council, hedge fund operator and Democratic Party fundraiser Orin Kramer, maneuvering to put more New Jersey pension funds into hedge funds and private equity.

And then feature Amaranth itself, whose founder and chief executive, Nicholas Maounis, in June of 2004 bestowed a $2,000 campaign contribution on that government guarantor of corporate integrity, Rep. Michael Oxley of the Sarbanes-Oxley Full Employment for Accountants and Deportation of Capital Act. Amaranth’s general counsel, another Oxley donor, wrote to the SEC on Amaranth letterhead a few months later opposing a proposed SEC rule to require registration of hedge funds. “Amaranth already devotes significant resources to regulatory compliance and is subject to many compliance obligations that are duplicative of those that would be required by the Proposed Rule,” the lawyer, Karl Wachter, wrote.

We happen also to be against that rule, which was struck down by the federal courts. Neither it nor Sarbanes-Oxley was enough to prevent the $5 billion evaporation at Amaranth. There’s nothing inherently nefarious about hedge funds nor even about money-losing investments. But as these funds increasingly invest money not just for rich individuals and institutions but for public pension funds run by politicians, and as the Bush bull market and business cycle starts to age, there may be more Amaranths. So their dramas become of great public interest.

The state comptroller in New York, Alan Hevesi, must be silently thanking the stars that Amaranth isn’t one of the many hedge funds or private equity funds that he has invested the state’s pension funds in while fundraising from their operators. As for Mr. Hevesi’s running mate on the Democratic ticket, Mr. Spitzer, it turns out that Amaranth’s Mr. Maounis may just be another corporate leader for Mr. Spitzer — his wife, Susan Maounis of Greenwich, Conn., has taken an interest in New York politics, donating $10,000 to Mr. Spitzer’s campaign for governor.

Attorney General Spitzer ordinarily might investigate a company that boasts of “highly disciplined, risk-controlled” trading while losing $5 billion of $9 billion and managing to do it in a single week. He’s been critical of the conflicts of interests on Wall Street. But he himself is a walking conflict-of-interest so long as he’s investigating the financial industry while raising money from the Corporate Leaders for Spitzer and their Greenwich-based wives.