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.
Categories
Archives
- September 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
Blogroll
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?
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.
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.