'Nightly News' Mows Over Hedge Fund Firms

Billion-dollar returns just aren’t good enough for NBC. On June 26, the “Nightly News” attacked wealthy hedge fund managers for making high-risk investments and for trying to do business with the “vulnerable” upper-middle class.

Reporter Carl Quintanilla mentioned rich investors who want to become “hedge fund rich,” but then focused his segment negatively on such investment firms.

“[T]he people who run them buy mansions, art – paying themselves salaries of over a billion dollars in just the past year.”

But is there anything wrong with that? According to Quintanilla, they’re run by greedy people and too risky for “a new more vulnerable audience.”

“They are beginning to target the upper middle class – the reasonably wealthy professional rather than the millionaire or the super-rich,” said Columbia University Law Professor John Coffee.

Quintanilla quoted billionaire and media darling Warren Buffett who has called hedge funds a “fool’s game,” but neglected to inform NBC viewers that Buffett once invested $620 million in a hedge fund.

The NBC broadcast also profiled successful hedge fund manager Tim Seymour and compared him to film villain Gordon Gekko of the 1987 movie “Wall Street.”