The latest issue of Vanity Fair checks out what’s been a’ poppin’ over in Cambridge, i.e. Ivy League ass bleeding. The endowment has lost $11 billion (and counting), a few professors have been laid off, some traitorous shrews are thinking the unthinkable (“there is a real chance that Harvard will no longer be considered the best there is”), and, worst of all, dining services will no longer be providing the Larry Summers Special (bacon, egg ‘n cheese, banana split and a diet Coke). Really, the only thing the Harvard has going for it is the rage of one HBS professor but he’s only one man and he’s only got so much scalding hot coffee at his disposal. And yet. Some people don’t think the institution truly gets it. They know the facts but the facts haven’t truly penetrated. Sounds like a job for a hedge fund manager who, if we were talking about his own fund, would be dictating lines to his secretary a la “We are all good in the hood, this isn’t our problem, it’s the market’s problem,” but is more than happy to fuck someone else up with a little dose of truth.
If Harvard were a serious business facing a liquidity crisis, it would have made drastic changes as its endowment tanked: say, axing senior employees, shuttering departments, and selling real estate. But elite universities don’t like shaking things up. “None of these schools has the ability to cut expenses fast enough” is how a hedge-fund manager who counts Harvard among his investors describes the situation. VF writer Nina Munk asked the hedge fund manager to look at Harvard’s finances and assess the extent to which its endowment will be able to keep pace with its immovable costs. The hedge fund manager’s conclusion: “They are completely fucked.”
So now they have to chose between Vanilla, Chocolate, Stawberry and completely fucked?
Suck it HBS
MCC’s boobs are fighting for supremecy.
@1 exactly
Bess!
@5 you gonna add anything else there? or have you reached the level of commenting you’ve reached?
Do you see what happens Larry? Do you see what happens, when you fuck an endowment in the ass?
@6 – I am pleased with my comment exactly the way it is.
@5
so, anonymous hedge fund manager, what do you suggest? closing the school and reseting the HWM?
Does Nina Munk have decent cleavage? I’m kinda hooked on cleavage posts now.
who would fail to see what without a choice of choc/vanil/straw, one is totally fucked?
@10 it’s not “cleavage,” it’s “cleave,” as bess would say.
Maybe they can rent out the freshman dorms for porn shoots?
@13 I’m ready for my close up
-Larry Summers
13 – I got a squeezer from an Indian chick in my freshman dorm… The quintessential Harvard experience, and I was at Amherst.
That little Egyptian dude snuck back to PIMCO in the nick of time. Well done, sir.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/bios/bio_munk
@14 w Mr. Frank?
Another car chase on Fox News
@12 maybe true but unlike bess I need something to say on the return stroke.
“That little Egyptian dude”
his name is Mohamed El-Erian and he could buy your life.
sorry, meant to sign that.
-bill gross/22
Didn’t Harvard squeeze out previous endowment managers because the academics complained the money guys were making too much money?
Paying somebody $10 million/year isn’t a bad deal if if he can prevent the endowment from losing $11 billion in a relatively short time span.
L-dog bears a striking resemblance to Jabba the Hut.
Get one of the turnaround shops in there. Love to see what Gores would do to the place
@ 24 – That’s like paying Ashley Dupree 5k to watch your kids, because she has a nurse outfit…
Larry Summers did start the cuts by refusing a gym membership.
They’ve got something that most “businesses” don’t have – rich alums who will pony up money for donations.
Plus, they’re betting that they can hold out for 10 years, at which time the market should be back to where it was in 2008, making all problems disappear – voila!
The veritable world seat of higher learning, and they can’t figure out how to balance a budget? Or that ice cream comes in conventient three-flavor packages?
mmm … donuts
Nina’s not stacked, but she’s loaded. Dad is Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and formerly Trizec Properties.
The Harvard implosion just shows what happens when liberals interfere with finance. Thankfully America wouldn’t suffer something like that, the government isn’t going to try to dictate salaries and strategies to a critical part of the economy….
Hmm anyone interested in 1 country, slightly used?
HBS did the typical dumb thing: load up on risk in a bull market and stick feathers in your own ass untill it looks like you trapped a dodo in there.
Then, as it always does, the market bitch-slaps you in face like a fat angry mother with a frying pan and you see stars all through the recession and for the better part of next bull run.
I hate when I get these early afternoon raging boners. It is awkward for me and my coworkers.
@34
i’m pretty sure they won’t notice – people in finance are generally not that detail oriented
@33 your fat mother slaps you with a frying pan?
Did the hedge fund manager in question attend Harvard or HBS?
@36
not any more dude, i live on my own now.
B. Frank.
Oh wait a minute…the MJ funeral procession isn’t a police chase as I thought earlier….sorry….
the OJ funeral procession?! awesome!
The Harvard endowment fund lost $ 11B? I’m glad someone else is getting crushed in this matket.
The E-Trade Baby.
@41
don’t sell it if you can’t spell it
BESS!
even down 11BB, the way they squeeze a friggin nickel they are still solvent for at least another 150 years
Good, fuck Harvard
@32 thanks. Harvard then may regret refusing nina access for the story and instead offer a blood for goods trade.
It’s the booger-picking-atrophied-wedding-band-tan-line-baby-hand-again.
@33: Throw momma from the train!
HaHa!!
Isn’t the a$$hole hedge-fund manager the one who put Harvard’s endowment on the ropes in the first place?
Why ask that f’n turd about a solution to the $11 Billion problem that he helped create?
WTF is he going to say? “Well, pay me 2 and 20, and I’ll try to help, because… well because… I have the recipe for Goldman’s secret sauce.”
HaHa!!
The Guy from Delaware
Isn’t Larry just going to blame this all on the fact that women are in change of both the university as well as the endowment and women have trouble with math?
I can’t wait for the HBS case study on the endowment. How can they possibly find fault? It is Harvard after all.
- Fixed Income
Mountain out of a bananasplithill. All they need to do is start charging students $100k a year to attend and only let in the ones who can pay the full amount.