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.”
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Was any mention made of John
June 27, 2007 - 16:59 ET by Chris NormanWas any mention made of John Edwards working for a hedge fund? What does that make him? Oh, that's right, he claimed he worked there to learn about the relationship between poverty and the financial markets - but, oh - the money was nice too. Does this make him Gordon Gekko or Mother Teresa or Mother Gekko?
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
- Arabian Proverb
..Exactly right Chris... T
June 27, 2007 - 17:07 ET by bigtimerThrow in George Soros too.
They probably meant Conservat
June 27, 2007 - 17:08 ET by Chris NormanThey probably meant Conservatives in hedge funds...
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
- Arabian Proverb
1. $620 million sounds like
June 28, 2007 - 04:02 ET by sarcasmo1. $620 million sounds like a lot, but it's like a drop in Warren's bucket.
2. Hedge funds tend to take risks which -- like LTCM and more-recently "Amaranth" took risks -- make them liabilities for taxpayers. As a taxpayer, I object. If they want to risk rich people's money or even not so rich people's money, that's fine, but when my wallet on April 15th becomes the insurance company, it's not-fine.
3. Nobody ever wants to talk about potential problems, despite disasters like LTCM and Amaranth.
4. The media bias, IMO, is too little coverage of the substantial risk if counterparties to these very complex transactions start failing sequentially, which is what would have already happened in the cases of LTCM, Amaranth, and CitiBank before that! The idea of "too big to fail" is distinctly anticapitalist, whether or not "the people" and the media happen to like it.
JMR