In 2010 Steve Schwarzman, who runs the private equity and hedge fund behemoth the Blackstone Group (BX), compared efforts to raise taxes on private equity and hedge fund managers with Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

Schwarzman ended up apologizing for the inappropriate analogy, but on the morning after the House of Representatives voted for a Senate-passed deal to avert the fiscal cliff, it increasingly looks like hedge fund and private equity managers have won their war in Washington.