boston.com — The warnings fell on deaf ears, under Summers’s regime and beyond. And when the market crashed in the fall of 2008, Harvard would pay dearly, as $1.8 billion in cash simply vanished. Indeed, it is still paying, in the form of tighter budgets, deferred expansion plans, and big interest payments on bonds issued to cover the losses.
Nov 29, 2009 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountNov 30, 2009
You stupid f**k.
cr0c0dile76Nov 30, 2009
So Harvard lost 1.8 billion of its 6 billion cash which it apparently didn't need anyways since it was 100 percent invested. Wooh Time for layoffs!
dsmxNov 30, 2009
To quote my university professor academics couldn't organise a piss up at a brewery.
busketNov 30, 2009
Yep. Political Correctness and the opposite of "academic freedom" are responsible. It's definitely not the global economic recession.
elranzerNov 30, 2009
Thankfully, that Harvard "genius" (and also a Yale alumnus) was booted out of the White House on January 29th, 2009.
ikzeidegekNov 30, 2009
Your comment is right on target. There is a tradeoff between expected return and risk when investing. Summers chose for high expected return, which is the best strategy if you can ride out the short term bumps in the market. A 30 year old should try invest 401(K) money in a way to maximize expected return because the time horizon is long. Harvard's time horizon is also long.