I don't personally know them, but perhaps you do. The point here is that the trio of Meriwether and the Nobel winners have been held out to be smart dudes. From some of the comments here, some of you may want to get more exposure to "geniuses." It will swell your confidence. I have a family member whose i.q. is around 200 and he can't start a lawnmower, or turn on the air conditioner of his car while driving at the same time, so everyone bakes. We all love him anyway. I'll take a very smart guy, who is very responsible, hyper- competitive and maniacally driven. That is the ticket.
Meriwether was a star bond trader at Salomon. Remember them? Meriwether was Paul Mozer's superior. Do you remember what happened? Lightening has struck twice. The folks who willingly gave Meriwether their hard earned money are morons. This guy used 10-33x leverage and returned, what, 40% a year the past 2 1/2 years? Can you seriously imagine using this much leverage, and getting that return in the past 2-3 year environment. This is absolutely, goddamn awful!! Yeah, yeah, I know, he did it while being safe and not having any real exposure to the downside! Please, stop it your killing me!!
I can pick out 20 names of people who post on these boards who would kick his ass, without leverage. No problem.
I know some poor economists. I now know 2 more economists who have irresponsibly lost hundreds of millions for their investors.
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