The Incredible Shrinking Harvard?

I think my father summed it up best when they called him to shake him down for $:

"You paid somebody $60mm to run your endowment, he lost $11bn, and now you want people like *ME* (a retired academic) to make up the shortfall??!? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

...expect revolt...huge....

I've always wondered, why do people abbreviate million mm? What is that a reference to?

m = thousand

c = hundred

etc...

mm = 2,000 really, but its shorthand for "thousand thousand"

So the original reference to "3m" used to mean "3,000"

Off the Grid wrote:

I think my father summed it up best when they called him to shake him down for $:

"You paid somebody $60mm to run your endowment, he lost $11bn, and now you want people like *ME* (a retired academic) to make up the shortfall??!? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

...expect revolt...huge....

Classic. Couldn't happen to a more worthy university. Such a shock that they are looking for a bailout considering their political leanings.

Sagarin wrote:

Classic. Couldn't happen to a more worthy university. Such a shock that they are looking for a bailout considering their political leanings.

More deserving is the fact that it was Ivy League "financial engineers," many of them Harvard alums, who were mostly responsible for this massive disappearing act.

You really know nothing at all. The products of "financial egineers" aren't the problem because if the loans backing those products weren't pig shit, they would still be performing. Let's be very clear who as at fault - all those dumb graduates of shit state u were working as mortgage brokers chasing a bubble to make a quick buck. They were originating loans that their clients knowingly couln't afford and in many cases committing out right fraud by lying on the applications. The "financial engineers" only securitized the loans that they were provided. In fact, the products are performing exactly as they were structured to perform if the underlying loans turned out to be garage. Those "financial engineers" didn't force the home buyers to pay too much for a home and mortgage brokers to originate loans their clients couldn't afford.

20,000 students and 16,000 employees?! Sounds like it's time to cut out the fat.

The school is overrated anyway, with flawed, behind the scenes prejudicial admittance policies and an institutional goal that puts hammering bolshevik propaganda into the noggins of as many students as possible. Heck, a certain group of people is admitted by the droves, with the majority of them now admitted through "pull", "legacy", and plain ol' behind-the-scenes ethnic cronyism, test scores and other requirements be damned. These folks yell about "old boy networks" and the like but they are actually the world's biggest hypocrites, the ultimate practitioners of what they pretend to disdain. Besides, have any of you had to work with people who've graduated from Harvard or Yale in the last 15 years? WTF is going on? They can repeat "material" from class or a book but no original or divergent thinking ability at all.

Once the US finally crumbles, and it will, it's no more immune from collapse than any other country, things can be fixed. In simple terms, the bums need to be thrown out. Especially the "Hollywood crowd" that actually runs academia, banking and DC right now. These people always make a mess of things. Then they get tossed. Then they twist the story to blame everyone else. I think it's going to make everyone else start acting like these hypocrites. Everyone else will start acting in terms of their own group first and foremost. Good.

Laugh now, but look around.

Actually, most top schools pride themselves on close to a 1:1 student to teacher ratio. Unlike major shit state u's where they throw 1,000 students into an lecture hall, at elite schools you are actually taught. I think you'll find similiar stats at every other school ranked in the top 30 in the nation that is not a public school.

xcrunner5 wrote:

You really know nothing at all. The products of "financial egineers" aren't the problem because if the loans backing those products weren't pig shit, they would still be performing. Let's be very clear who as at fault - all those dumb graduates of shit state u were working as mortgage brokers chasing a bubble to make a quick buck. They were originating loans that their clients knowingly couln't afford and in many cases committing out right fraud by lying on the applications. The "financial engineers" only securitized the loans that they were provided. In fact, the products are performing exactly as they were structured to perform if the underlying loans turned out to be garage. Those "financial engineers" didn't force the home buyers to pay too much for a home and mortgage brokers to originate loans their clients couldn't afford.

When Glass-Steagall was repealed, traditional banks were no longer obligated to hold onto the loans they made. So "financial engineers" at places like Merrill and AIG financial products acted as underwriters to bundle up the loans into collateralized debt obligations and wrote insurance contracts on them called credit default swaps.

The loan originators and traditional banks were feeding the demand on the underwriting side for mortgages to bundle. After all, if the traditional banks they worked with weren't going to keep the loans, why would they care if the loans they made were "garbage"? It was a corrupt business model from beginning to end. To blame one end shows ignorance. The financial engineers were underwriting garbage because there were investors out there willing to buy the crap in supposedly risk-calibrated "tranches."

You have to blame the banks, the financial engineers, Congress, and the institutional investors who bought the garbage in spite of their outrageous compensation.

Cal Tech was Great wrote:

have any of you had to work with people who've graduated from Harvard or Yale in the last 15 years?

I was Y'94. My best friend is Y'94. Yale IS NOT Hahvahd, Thank Gawd.

You wouldnt happen to be associated with these financial engineers would you?

Just as many people idealize Harvard, many others are quick to take shots at it. Regarding its financial status, I have yet to see anything that indicates serious problems. Harvard's endowment got rocked after a period of great returns, but so did a lot of other rich institutions and individuals. The loss of about 30% reflects a pretty aggressive investment position for an endowment or trust, and perhaps Harvard needs to rethink its overall allocation to various investment types and dial down the overall portfolio risk instead of pursuing market-beating goals, but I don't see anything remotely near a financial crisis for the university. The whining about the compensation for portfolio managers at Harvard Management Company (as reflected in one of the posts above) has given way, to some extent, to the recent whining about HMC's investment losses, but there's always a lot of whining from and about Harvard. I was sad to see Mohamed El-Erian leave HMC and replaced by someone who doesn't seem to have his investments credentials, but perhaps a return to stodgy investing (indexing a 60/40 stock-bond portfolio, or something similarly unimaginative) might be a good thing.

As for Harvard's presidency, trading Larry Summers for Drew Gilpin Faust seems like a pretty bad deal. Summers was a hard-nosed leading scholar in an important field who was willing to speak hard truths and take tough and sometimes unpopular actions; Faust is a comfortable old shoe for the faculty of arts and sciences (FAS). But Harvard has survived periods of mediocre management at various other times in its 375 or so years, and it will come through this stretch without any mortal wounds -- to the disappointment of many.

In the meantime, I haven't been taking any calls when the word "Harvard" shows up on my caller I.D.; there are plenty of other people who are willing to shell out tens of millions of dollars to Harvard to get a room on a wing named after them.

Hahaha "Hollywood crowd" is that who we're blaming now? I guess we've moved on from blaming the jews for all our problems, to blaming liberals. Blacks are hardly admitted in "droves" and I'd just about guarantee that all the ones who are admitted, are smarter than you. The real issue is all the rich children of the powerful who get admitted by pull, because by and large they're idiots and some of the laziest, most-entitled feeling people you're ever likely to meet.

100% nonsenseWhen I quit Lehman in 2006, I read my stock grant documents. They had acquired 5-6 mortgage originators to capture supply. This was common practice among WS iBanks. That was the goal - bring the earnings from the flow (20yrs of fees realized in 1 yr) onto your income statement, and keep the liabilities off the balance sheet. Harvard alum basically bribed practitioners of an erstwhile staid business.WS iBanks got the ratings agencies to rate these piles of crap AAA. The agencies were paid on flow, so they too were bribed by Harvard alum on the CDO/CLO desks.Harvard needs to start being managed less as a brand and more as an academic institution.

xcrunner5 wrote:

You really know nothing at all. The products of "financial egineers" aren't the problem because if the loans backing those products weren't pig shit, they would still be performing. Let's be very clear who as at fault - all those dumb graduates of shit state u were working as mortgage brokers chasing a bubble to make a quick buck. They were originating loans that their clients knowingly couln't afford and in many cases committing out right fraud by lying on the applications. The "financial engineers" only securitized the loans that they were provided. In fact, the products are performing exactly as they were structured to perform if the underlying loans turned out to be garage. Those "financial engineers" didn't force the home buyers to pay too much for a home and mortgage brokers to originate loans their clients couldn't afford.

Off the Grid wrote:

Harvard needs to start being managed less as a brand and more as an academic institution.

That's a nice slogan, I suppose, but I don't see what it has to do with anything else that's been discussed, and I don't see any great conflict between "managing" Harvard's "brand" and "managing" the academic institution. Indeed, Harvard's "brand" gives it a big advantage in the academic marketplace for students, faculty, researchers, and money. I think that Harvard should probably do more, not less, to protect its "brand."

Avocados Number wrote:

I think that Harvard should probably do more, not less, to protect its "brand."

How about shutting down the football program? That would bring more focus to academics, like at M.I.T. and Cal Tech.

yo la tengo wrote:

I've always wondered, why do people abbreviate million mm? What is that a reference to?

because they're lazy and don't check style guides. simply touching base with the 'economists style guide' would present that m is correct.

Living in the Past wrote:

The loan originators and traditional banks were feeding the demand on the underwriting side for mortgages to bundle. After all, if the traditional banks they worked with weren't going to keep the loans, why would they care if the loans they made were "garbage"? It was a corrupt business model from beginning to end. To blame one end shows ignorance. The financial engineers were underwriting garbage because there were investors out there willing to buy the crap in supposedly risk-calibrated "tranches."

CMO "tranches" were the biggest socialistic-fog-machine-Ponzi-scheme ever devised. Their purpose wasn't to mitigate or isolate risk, it was to disguise risk. Even the Sloan graduates couldn't understand what they were creating and buying.