Saturday, May 16, 2009
'Hedge fund mania'
Joe Nocera talks with retiring hedge-fund manager and former journalist Neil Barsky. Keep in mind Barsky is calling it quits only after his own overearning, so to speak, on Wall Street. But he still makes sense:
Joe Nocera talks with retiring hedge-fund manager and former journalist Neil Barsky. Keep in mind Barsky is calling it quits only after his own overearning, so to speak, on Wall Street. But he still makes sense:
“(The hedge fund industry) was part of this huge trend towards the celebration of wealth. Hedge fund managers overearned. It just became too easy. There has been a massive misallocation of human resources. I have so many smart guys here who were making seven figures. And I think it is a fair question to ask: what would they have been doing in 1948 — going into the foreign service? If Obama does anything, the best thing he could do is change a generation’s values. ...One quibble with the piece: The hint, suggestion, whatever that the hedge-fund industry survived because it was unregulated. Sorry. Ain't buying it. The self-policing argument now lies buried in the rubble of derivatives and credit-default swaps. Without the taxpayer bailout, hedge funds would have been dragged under too.
“I have a friend whose son is a senior at Princeton. She said all his friends want to work for Goldman Sachs. ... We have an overground railroad to finance. It is not the best way for a society to be run.”
