Harvard and Yale are Really Down Big Time

December 23rd, 2008

This is a great post from Paul Kedrosky about Harvard’s real results are really, really bad right now. Seems that investment banks, brokers and commercial banks aren’t the only ones pretending things are better than they really are.

Harvard Losses

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3 Responses to “Harvard and Yale are Really Down Big Time”

  1. DaveinHackensack Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 1:43 am

    Aaron,

    To the extent that some of these losses are based on subjective assessments of the value of illiquid assets, shouldn’t they be taken with the same grain of salt with which one should take these endowments’ great quoted returns over the years?

  2. admin Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 7:41 am

    I think that their performance was never as good as they claimed and were due to marks. And if you aren’t marking to market, then how exactly are you marking things? And why should we trust any number you put up.

    I expect that Harvard and Yale are going to be announcing terrible results for awhile. They are all trapped in these terrible private equity funds.

  3. DaveinHackensack Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    I’m thinking specifically of some of their illiquid investments such as timberland. I guess they rely on expert appraisals, but again these are subjective.

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