Our favorite southern Connecticut quant recently wrote an opinion piece about his thoughts on healthcare, with reference to, among others, Canadians ("parasitic hosers"), NASA ("twisted fascist bastards"), and Scandinavians ("twelve herring-eating homogenous people"), and had the foresight to include the following:
AQR's legal department would like me to add that I am criminally insane and barred by an order of rhetoric protection from speaking on AQR's behalf. Anyone trading on my advice, or a client, consultant, employee or Iraqi insurgent thinking he has been wronged by my attitudes or opinions can have a $250 out-of-court settlement right now if you'll sign a waiver, otherwise we'll break you. Oh, and we lied about the $250, but seriously, we will break you. Please note, nobody can predict where markets will go in the short-run and sometimes even the long-run. When I point out individual things in the marketplace that I think are strange, or wrong, it doesn't mean I have the perfect answer or can easily make money from it for my clients, for myself, or certainly for you reading this essay! Furthermore, if you read one guy's opinion and do anything based solely on that, you are an idiot. Next, as the legalese above alludes to, the actual funds and accounts AQR manages are run using models that may or may not agree with what I'm writing herein, particularly as our models will generally have a shorter time horizon than the things I'll be writing about. Listen to me at your own risk.
Finally, my style is to write very aggressively and passionately about what I believe. So unless you are a libertarian/objectivist, small government and free market loving, socialist hating, value investing geek you probably won't agree with everything or anything I say. If you find the way I say it insulting, I'm sorry about the first few words you couldn't help reading, but if you read a moment past that (in this disclaimer or later), it is on you. I agree we need to censor things occasionally but only to protect children and madmen (and of course the children of madmen). If you believe in censoring anything else short of a nuclear secret you'd probably look good in hobnail boots and the crooked cross. Thanks for listening.
What We Know That Ain't So [Stumbling on Truth via ZH]
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:52AM
I want to pound Cliff in his Asness.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:53AM
Beth Levin you vicious animal liar!!!!
-you know who
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:54AM
who is cliff asness and his assbleeding funds to call anyone an idiot?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:56AM
wtf is this? is this real?!
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:57AM
@4 yup
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:58AM
@4 CA wrote an opinion piece on healthcare. this was the disclaimer he provided at the bottom. for real.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:58AM
I'm stuck between the general idiocy of his writing and the balls-out humor of his disclaimer.
This makes no sense.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 10:59AM
Cliff, what you fail to get is that it's totally transparent in your little self-deprecating "disclaimer" that you believe yourself to be totally lucid and NOT a rabid beast when in fact, you REALLY ARE criminally insane.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:00AM
@7 it would be balls-out humor if he didn't think it was just a joke. the guy thinks he's NOT insane, and that he's just putting out this disclaimer tongue in cheek. when in reality he's a one nut-bag motherfucker.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:02AM
The best part is that after his little stunt on DB last december there were actually investors who pulled money from AQR.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:04AM
check please
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:05AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124303417991748685.html
Today, Mr. Asness is running a much smaller firm, grappling with the future of the hedge-fund industry and nursing wounds from a year whose low points included smashed computer screens and a Web-site tirade that became the talk of Wall Street.
As rumors swirled about the size of AQR's losses on a message board on the Wall Street blog Dealbreaker on Dec. 4, Mr. Asness, sitting in his office at AQR's headquarters in Greenwich, Conn., responded.
"This is Cliff Asness," he began, launching into a diatribe against the "cowardly posts" and "little liars" spreading rumors. He posted the message on the message board, and quickly realized he had made a mistake.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:06AM
@12 ftw
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:08AM
@12 holy shit I can't believe I missed that story.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:11AM
Cliff Asness feeds on the souls of lost children.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:11AM
from the "essay"..."Those are advantages most private firms do not have, save Google, and you didn’t hear that from me (we all know the Google guy with one eye-brow would crush your larynx for creating a competing search engine)."
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:12AM
@12 Wow! How the hell was this missed?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:14AM
@17 looks like it came out over memorial day weekend. anyway, awesome.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:17AM
This guy Cliff thinks he's funny. Cliff, you are not. You are an insane egomaniac. That is all.
Go back and read something about markets.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:20AM
@9. Good point. -7
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:20AM
Cliff A$ne$$ = Bat Shit Loco
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:23AM
@19 yep.
Posted by merkin capital partners , Jul 17, 2009 11:25AM
“They might think they’ve got a pretty jump shot or a pretty good flow,” Mr. Obama said, “but our kids can’t all aspire to be LeBron or Lil Wayne."
God Bless America.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:26AM
who the fuck gives this nutbag money?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:29AM
I don't know what you guys are talking about. This Asness fellow sounds totally sound of mind.
-John Forbes Nash
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:32AM
@25 nice
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:36AM
always amazes me how some people manage to achieve what they have in life
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:38AM
Wow, that was so deranged I thought Bess was making it up.
Maybe CG has somebody else to call "deranged but brilliant" on his next Fast Money segment.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:39AM
I love it. Where can I write this screwball a check. Don't let the Jones's get you down, Cliff.
Posted by Novice , Jul 17, 2009 11:39AM
@21
The clinical term for Mr. Asness's condition is "batshit fucking loco"
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:41AM
@25 comparing Cliffy to Nash is an insult to Nash. Just sayin'
Besides, what the hell is the point of a Nobel prize in Economics?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:41AM
He looks like the 65-year-old maitre d' at the best restaurant in Des Moines.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:43AM
23 What's the problem Merk? Had that quote come from Clarence Thomas or Michael Steele you would be so happy you would be on the floor trying to stuff both of their cocks in your mouth at once.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:45AM
@30 my bad. You're right, I totally missed the "fucking" part
- 21
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:45AM
@28 My Fast Money segment is called "Off the Record," write it down. And he's just deranged, not brilliant.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:46AM
He made some valid points but the essay requires some cleaning.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:48AM
@35 why does CNBC still invite the nut job to spew on air? entertainment value? I'm confused?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:51AM
@36 Kabiller, is that you?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 11:59AM
"This is what happens when you talk to car people like 30 minutes ago."
- Macke
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:08PM
i scanned through the essay - actually makes some good points. raging right wing nutcase. but some good points.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:08PM
Alright, so Asness gets a little out there and has a total lack of discretion, but let's do an informal poll. Who here agrees fundamentally with more than two-thirds of what the guy is substantively saying?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:09PM
@24 - State of Oregon.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:14PM
@24 California
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:18PM
"Iraqi insurgent thinking he has been wronged by my attitudes or opinions" is the new killin it.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:27PM
I like this guy. Ron Paul/Cliff Asness 2012!!
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:39PM
The guy is a nut job
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 12:40PM
this guy manages people's retirement money?
Posted by HeadlessHorseman , Jul 17, 2009 1:10PM
I can't help but note that we're 45+ comments in (almost all of which are mocking Cliff as a some sort of crazy), and not a single one of you has taken issue with the actual content of the essay.
Surely one of you tweakers can set aside your Red Bull long enough to fumble your way through what I feel was a logically sound essay and formulate a coherent response? If you need help with any of the big words, just ask. Fair warning: you'll need to endure several pages of written words without pictures to make it all the way through...so take breaks as neeeded.
I suspect that many of you don't know anything about health care and understand even less about economics. As such, you make fun of him for whatever your feeble little minds can ever so loosely grasp. At least he's actually entertaining, which is more than can be said for most of the DB comment sections over the past few months. Moreover, Cliff has the balls to not only post something but sign his name.
I've also noted that most of the worthwhile posters (Anal_yst, TGFD, Tax Chick, Bodine, Cluzo, SBII, Bandersnatch, HAM, and etcetera) are posting with less frequency which is probably a leading indicator that most of you "guests" are slowly choking the humor and intelligence from this site by way of the unabadated flood of stupid posts. Pound that in the ass.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:12PM
Hey idiots. Stop giving your money to his Asness. Instead, give it to me,
guest, Ph. D.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:12PM
headless horseman = cliff asness
also, anal_yst comments at least ten times a day, and those of us who aren't deeply disturbed retarded pieces of trailer trash are extremely happy at the lack of SBII and TFGD comments.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:15PM
"I can't help but note that we're 45+ comments in (almost all of which are mocking Cliff as a some sort of crazy), and not a single one of you has taken issue with the actual content of the essay."
well, perhaps that could be because the POINT of the post was to highlight his insanity, and not actually about his essay, as evidenced by the particular quote that was highlighted. I wonder why that was done. oh, right: because, if you've ever read DB, you know that Cliff Asness's insanity is a running theme.
Also, citing a lack of comments from TGFD as a dwindling of intelligence? have you recently suffered a blow to the head, or are you just that stupid?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:22PM
You @45:
"Cliff has the balls to not only post something but sign his name."
So when are you going to follow his example, HeadlessHorseshit?
guest, Ph. D.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:34PM
@Headless
Remember this? Before you go taking the high ground:
"
Dennis Kneale has made a career out of personifying unbridled and unrestrained stupidity. (Redundancy for emphasis).
Where most grown men have some sense of pride and self-respect in Dennis Kneale exists a black hole of ill-conceived thoughts and other assorted intellectual abortions so dense that they temporarily corrupt the very mental integrity of any level-headed passerby unfortunate enough to be exposed to his sputtering.
Get down,
HH
"
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:42PM
@Headless
http://dealbreaker.com/2009/07/citi-gives-ge-the-heisman.php#c16
Posted by american bandersnatch , Jul 17, 2009 1:53PM
An excellent essay. Could he write something about rice prices? Dealbreaker's coverage has been somewhat lacking of late.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 1:58PM
I think that by virtue of my pageviews I'm entitled to at least one comment a day.
Posted by trojan , Jul 17, 2009 1:59PM
how the hell did anybody miss the BL-CA fight of the century?
i can get a big purse if you sign on again bess.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:01PM
"how the hell did anybody miss the BL-CA fight of the century?"
what are you talking about? nobody missed it, we missed the wsj write up of fight, 5 months later.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:02PM
@ trojan- "i can get a big purse if you sign on again bess."
what does that mean?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:02PM
OK I'll feed the troll (48). In response to CA or anyone else bemoaning any health care plan I would say this...the current system is totally fucked up and really honestly couldn't get much worse. Instead of all the wasted time energy and lobbyist fees on this, we would be better off picking the most "intellectually pure" health care alternative and go with it. If it doesn't work after a few years, we can always tweak it. And also can we just please get rid of the farce that is social security?!?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:17PM
@60
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:24PM
60=DailyKos commenter.
And there's been a shitload of them lately.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:28PM
Asness's philosophy is non-novel. Clearly his real strength is as a hedge fund manager.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 2:52PM
@63 nice
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 3:05PM
@62 DailyKos crybabies with 5 foot long poles up their ass is the cancer that is killing Dealbreaker.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 3:10PM
@62, @65
You obviously don't read DailyKos.
@63
Good one.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 3:25PM
Cliff Asness, after clinching the greatest investor of all time title, now sets out to fix the healthcare system.
If he does half as good a job as he did managing money, 2/3 of US population will die within 12 months of monkeypox.
Posted by HeadlessHorseman , Jul 17, 2009 4:43PM
@ 53/54
Yeah. Those comments weren’t really constructive…but they were entertaining. I’ve got no problem with comments from the peanut gallery if they’re at least humorous. For instance, I appreciated 67’s comment because although it fails to constructively argue against Asness’ position, it’s actually funny by way of its combination of creativity (monkeypox) and sarcasm. Same thing with SBII and TGFD. They often don’t contribute much to the conversation (save for SBII’s insightful tearing down of Cap & Trade) but they’re usually funny or at least interesting (albeit often in a disturbing way).
@ 60
I certainly agree that it could be better. I just also happen to agree with Asness’ argument that government health care isn’t the answer. I also agree that social security is bound to fail (depending on one’s interpretation of its purpose). The billion dollar questions is how do you fix either in a way that’s politically feasible…or do you have to start by fixing the political problems first?
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 4:49PM
@headless- are you absolutely insane? TGFD and SBII have never, not once been funny. TFGD's comments are an incoherent stream of consciousness that truly make no sense, and SBII's, no matter what the post is about, are a bitter rant against minorities/women/gays any other group he can aim his trailer trash POV.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 5:12PM
@Headless.
Thanks for responding. I do agree that Dennis Kneale is a Collie raping bastard.
Being funny is in the eye [mind] of the beholder... @63 made me laugh all the way through lunch. The monkeypox joke was great & true.
TGFD and TOGFD (his Gimp) are not funny.
Just Sayin' :-)
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 5:14PM
@69
Agree.
HH is a troll that wants to infest this site with stupid politks. SB II is the same but he can take the heat better than your typical trailer trash. And sometimes he can be funny while HH always fails, just like EP.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 5:16PM
HH why don't you try leading by example. You just thread jacked the fuck out of a post that was a perfect tee up for funny comments about what happened after this romantic dinner etc. If you don't like the trolls, stop acting like one. Make an actual contribution, if you can.
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 5:18PM
@Headless (is that your big or little head): Stop fucking around on this site and go back to managing my mutual fund. I'm not paying for your New Canaan redo only to have you wasting time here. Navatarola your man/wife wants a new tennis court now get to work!
Posted by guest , Jul 17, 2009 5:21PM
@72 agreed
Posted by guest , Jul 25, 2009 8:07AM
AQR has become a marketing shop. Business development people call all the shots. Partners are more focused on raising money and collect management fee, off course who cares about the performance. They can maintain their life styles on the management fee and by screwing ( read not paying market price) their analysts/associates. Front office keeps itself busy and feel happy about writing and rewriting the production code in C, C++, C#, java, python, cobra, bear, lion, tiger, peacock....
Posted by guest , Aug 02, 2009 10:03PM
AQR's two biggest hedge funds are up like 40 percent and 25 percent this year. Nice comeback from the carnage last year. And when Cliff talks, you people all seem to listen. Who would you rather be? Bored under-achieving anonymous bloggers like yourselves or Cliff with his Maserati, 20 billion under management and a voice people actually care to listen to. Oh, and he has the guts to sign his name when he writes controversial statements. You don't always have to stand tall people, but every once in a while you do have to stand up. And the rest of you sit while Cliff stands. You are not fit to even write his name. If I wasn't so damn good looking I might just pick him to be.