Clifford S. Asness: Unafraid In Greenwich Connecticut

[From the Ney York Times' Dealbook: May 5, 2009, 6:07 pm: "Hedge Fund Manager Strikes Back at Obama. Clifford S. Asness is not afraid to defend himself against attacks from the Obama administration. The outspoken managing partner of AQR Capital Management, a $20 billion hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn., has written a scathing letter striking back at President Obama for his harsh words blaming hedge funds for Chrysler’s bankruptcy. The letter is making its way around Wall Street, where it’s being met with cheers from other hedge funds managers, one of whom sent it to DealBook. Among other things, Mr. Asness said he was “aghast at the president’s comments” and called them “backwards and libelous.” I found this through Diana West's blog. While she is quite the American Zionist, I think her angry skepticism of the GOP's post-election strategy is right on. This comes the same day that I noticed Richard Posner's recent renunciation of the GOP or the rump conservative movement as any kind of home for intellectual conservatism. It seems clear to me that the various forces and players on the non-evangelical American right have the tools, the talent and the ideas to recenter the Republican Party, to rebuild from the centrist pussyfootery of the recent McCain-Palin campaign which, despite my measured enthusiasm for the governor of Alaska last fall, I readily agree as a disaster. The party needs to convince disappointed lovers, fellow travelers, moderates, people who work for small business, and all kinds of independents, professionals and other dynamists that the Grand New Party should be and will be the opposite of the waxing Obama Mussolini-style corporate state...]

Unafraid in Greenwich Connecticut
Clifford S. Asness
Managing and Founding Principal
AQR Capital Management, LLC

The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration’s bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them “speculators” who were “refusing to sacrifice like everyone else” and who wanted “to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.”

The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a “group letter,” was the superb note from “The Committee of Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders,” some of the points of which I echo here, and a relatively few firms, like Oppenheimer, that have publicly defended themselves). Furthermore, one by one the managers and banks are said to be caving to the President’s wishes out of justifiable fear.

I run an approximately twenty billion dollar money management firm

Financial Crisis Conference 2009, University of Chicago (transcript)

[Dear Reader: What follows is a transcript of the conference held today at the University of Chicago on the origins and implications of the current financial crisis. It was enormously stimulating. The panelists were twelve professors of economics, history, sociology and anthropology from the University of Chicago, Rutgers, the New School for Social Research, the University of Michigan, and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. NB This is the raw transcript; I will correct it for spelling and turn it into full Thucydidean prose in the next week or so.]

Panel 1: Sources of the Crisis
(see separate posting, where I have typed these up complete)

[What follow are the rough notes to Panels 2 and 3. I will turn them into prose soon.]

Panel 2: Crisis in Perspective: Historical and International Comparisons