dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com - 3/3/2009
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There have been a number of bubbles over the past decade that we now know about. Unfortunately, we are also about to find out if there was an education bubble.
Fueled by endowment gains and tuition increases, universities in recent years have gone on a building, faculty and program expansion ...
forbes.com - 3/8/2009
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forbes.com —
Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new
school year began, but at Harvard University it was...
as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass. home, the start of a grand expansion that was to ...
(more)
Harvard: the Inside Story of Its Finance Meltdown
boston.com - 2/25/2009
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boston.com —
ONE OF THE elections I'm fascinated with this
year is for . . . Harvard's Board of...
Overseers. Why, you say, should we non-Harvard types care about an election for the lesser of Harvard's two governing boards? Because two outspoken candidates are ...
(more)
Free speech at Harvard - The Boston Globe
boston.com - 3/2/2009
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boston.com —
How fast does the prolific law professor and
appellate judge Richard Posner write? Faster than the Harvard...
University Press can edit. Posner, as is his wont, has jumped on the news and produced a book, this time about the financial crisis. It's ...
(more)
Posner writes faster than publishers can publish
Comments
Blog Reactions
Tuesday links: hunkering down
Abnormal Returns —
... A closer look at the problems facing universities who have come to rely on the returns from illiquid investments like private equity. (DealBook) ...
Readings: AIG hedge fund, Education bubble, $7500 houses
GalaTime —
... there was no oversight of the financial- products division, this was a hedge fund basically that was attached to a large and stable insurance company.”
The company “made huge numbers of irresponsible bets, took huge losses, there was no regulatory oversight because there was a gap in the system,” Bernanke said. At the same time, officials “had no choice but to try and stabilize the system” by aiding the firm.
Dealbook, NY Times: Harvard, Private Equity and the Education Bubble
Fueled by ...
Harvard as Hedge Fund
Capital Gains and Games —
... There is a fascinating post at DealBook by Steven Davidoff that takes a peek behind the curtain of high finance in higher education, using the Harvard University endowment as an illustration. An excerpt: ...
Readings
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed —
... Bank of England cuts interest rates to 0.5% and starts quantitative easing (guardian) BBC World Service on credit ratings agencies (amusing) (BBC) How much can investors make on Talf? (BV) Darth Wall Street thwarting debtors with credit default swaps (Bloomberg) Finance's Power 50 is led by government officials (II) Harvard, Private Equity and the Education Bubble (DealBook)
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The Bernanke Exit in Dillon, SC, Forestalling Retrenchment at the Conglomerate
Conglomerate —
... to law blogs, but we at the Conglomerate wish to assure you that we plan no cutbacks in the service that we provide our valued customers. Although we are a nonprofit, nonprofits have been as affected as anyone by the current recession. We staff leanly, however, have eschewed leverage and debt, and believe that we are well positioned as any in our peer industry to ride out - and, indeed, ...
Guest Post: Have Pensions Succumbed to Casino Capitalism?
naked capitalism —
... The problem, argues Davidoff, a former corporate lawyer at the elite firm Shearman and Sterling, in a piece published on the New York Times's Dealbook, lies in the proportion of Harvard's endowment tied up in illiquid assets -- in private equity and real-estate, for example. That's money Harvard does not have immediate access to (doubly so in a bad economy). In 2007, Davidoff estimates, 26 percent, or $11.2 billion, of the endowment was illiquid, including $5.16 billion in private equity. ...
Related Content
VA • NI • TAS
epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com 7/22/2009 — In the days when Harvard’s endowment provided only a fraction of the university’s operating budget, a loss would have been unfortunate, but not tragic. In recent years, however, Harvard’s soaring endowment has become the engine fueling the ...
A Closer Look at the Harvard Portfolio Changes
paul.kedrosky.com 2/12/2009 — There has been lots of chatter about Harvard Management winding down much of its equity portfolio, as a filing this week showed, so I thought it would be interesting to take a little closer look at what Harvard has done. From September 30th to ...
Harvard Endowment Cut Stock Holdings
online.wsj.com 2/12/2009 — JOHN HECHINGER Harvard University's endowment, the largest in higher education, cut by two-thirds its direct holdings of publicly traded stocks and funds during the market plunge in last year's fourth quarter. As of Dec. 31, Harvard Management Co., ...
H is for Hedge Fund
epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com 7/23/2009 — “Were the judgments we made reasonable ones?” a former top Harvard administrator asked me, rhetorically, addressing the sharp increase in expenses and capital commitments of the last decade. “At the time, I think they were reasonable judgments. It ...
Harvard's alumni fail to dazzle in recession
telegraph.co.uk 2/16/2009 — When Andy Hornby, the former chief executive of HBOS, was asked by the Treasury Select Committee to detail his banking qualifications he couldn't. Like his fellow bankers, Sir Fred Goodwin, Sir Tom McKillop and Lord Stevenson, being questioned by the ...
Rich Harvard, Poor Harvard: Vanity Fair
vanityfair.com 7/3/2009 — Harvard doesn't fire people; it “resizes” • Budget cuts are not in the Harvard vocabulary—or at least they haven’t been. “I'd rather use the words ‘reduction,’ ‘shifting things around,’ ‘reorganizing’—rather than saying something that says ‘cuts,’ ...
How Harvard University Almost Destroyed Itself
business.theatlantic.com 5/29/2009 — Boston Magazine has a long, shocking piece about how the people running the world's greatest university almost bankrupted the school through a series of very dumb financial decisions after a decade of unbelievable growth in the endowment. Reading the ...
How Harvard's Investing Superstars Crashed
forbes.com 4/5/2009 — Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University, it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass., home, the start of a grand expansion that was to ...
Alternative Investments, Illiquidity, and Endowment Management
alephblog.com 9/17/2009 — I am a risk manager first, and a profit maker second. I tend not to trust solutions that are “magic bullets” unless there is some barrier to entry — why can you do it, and few others can? Knowledge travels.
So, regarding the “endowment model” of investing, I ...
This Isn't Your Grandfather's Recession
tbm.thebigmoney.com 2/13/2009 — The congressional debate over the stimulus package may be over, but the larger debate isn't. Many critics of the bill, which contains a mix of tax cuts and government spending, believe that the government spending part just won't work. Thirty-six ...
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