- "Something remarkable was about to happen to the markets, an upheaval that would change the course of financial history and transform John Paulson from a mere spectator to the biggest player in the game" - Autumn 2008. As the world"s financial markets collapse, one man is left standing tall. That man is John Paulson, the softly spoken hedge-fund legend who predicted the crash. By betting against the housing market and the banks he earned $15 billion for his fund and $4 billion for himself in a single year. That"s the largest trading windfall in history, by far. And this is how he did it.