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Source:
Data Show College Endowments Loss Is Worst Drop Since ’70s
KATIE ZEZIMA
NYT, January 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/education/27college.html
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Dollar depreciation leads to higher inflation and ultimately forces foreign creditors to question their rationale and indeed their sanity for continuing purchases of U.S. Treasuries." -Bill Gross
Signs continue that European markets are getting tired. The Spanish and Italian stock markets, big beneficiaries of the sharp decline in their bond yields over the past few months are falling to the lowest since Feb 1. The European bank index is at a 1 1/2 week low after earnings reports from Commerzbank and Credit Ag (RBS bouncing although reporting weaker than expected earnings) were disappointing. This market action is in spite of the German IFO business confidence figure which rose to a 7 month high coming in a touch above expectations and Italian consumer confidence which bounced more than...
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January 28th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Good thing we paid all of those financial wizards the big bucks to manage endowments. What a bunch of sheep off to the slaughter…
January 28th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
These folks who manage endowments are often the people who aren’t bright enough to be in Asset Management on the Street, or dynamic enough to run their own money management firms. Eventually we will find out they were long oil at $145 or invested with Madoff.
The sad truth is most of them have no ideas at all except for buy-and-hold and just walked into the buzz-saw in 2007-2008 by holding on to big positions in over-priced corporate bond and index funds. Even sadder is the fact that one or two of them probably had a clue but couldn’t be heard over the baaaing of the sheep.
I have no doubt that most of them did exactly the same with their 401Ks and went down with the ship. The number of people I have met who managed their 401K through this without major losses is so small that it is like a secret society of rebels with funny handshakes and passwords.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I agree on 401K’s Leftback. I was just talking to an economic modeler who specializes in modeling boom-bust cycles (senior full professor). His primary focus is on utilities, but also studies real estate for analogies. So this guy’s wife was terribly nervous about the economy and housing, and wanted to pull their retirement out of stocks. But he used his expertise to construct a bunch of models showing they were better off staying in stocks. Good lord, talk about not seeing the forest for the modeler’s trees.