elucidator: Good God, man, would it kill you to try to make at least one reasonable, tangible, specific criticism of the transaction in question? After all, you’re the one claiming this as evidence that “Bush is a crook.” Don’t you think you have an obligation to substantiate that claim?
Again, I say: put up or shut up.
So Harken was in excellent shape, a worthy investment for anyone lucky enough to have the opportunity!
And yet, for some unexplained reason, it was necessary for George to “save the company”, as you put it. Because “Harvard was facing default on $47.5 mm worth of Harken debt.”
More cognitive dissonance than a busted chainsaw.
Me:
You:
Not so. If you had been party to the previous thread “Bush is a crook, says Mr. Krugman” you would be aware that it is my opinion that Bush was a doofus, a front man who got the “mushroom treatment” i.e. kept in the dark and fed bullshit.
My OP title was a reference to that previous thread, AKA “The Long March”, as this was something of an update on a previous event.
I think he is a mediocrity, with utterly unfounded delusions of being a Leader of Men. It might be better for us all if he were a crook.
Good Lord, do you really see the world in such a binary fashion? Do you really believe that companies are either (1) fantastic investments with strong revenues and high profits or (2) utter failures without any income stream whatsoever? The world ain’t like that. There is a HUGE continuum between, say, Pets.com and General Electric.
Harken was struggling, but it wasn’t an utter failure, either. It had assets and operations that generated revenue. Given the right economic climate and opportunities, that revenue might be large enough to produce profits.
Even declaring bankruptcy doesn’t mean a company is an utter disaster. Continental Airlines has gone through Chapter 11 not once, but twice. Yet people still invested in Continental, both before and after both bankruptcies.
Your responses really are getting more and more pathetic.**
Pot, kettle, black. Although that’s inappropriate since Scylla isn’t a pot here.
Uh… nope. You and Dewey keep asserting this was a good deal for Harvard, and it’s a stone cinch it was good for Harken, but I haven’t seen any actual information introduced to show how Harvard eventually made out. It’s quite possible they played the bubble they produced skillfully enough to make up for the obscene risk they unaccountably ( :rolleyes: ) took in making the original loans to Harken. The article, however, doesn’t indicate that’s so.
Hmm. Still misrepresenting your opponents as your preferred method of argument? Nice veiled ad hom, there, hombre. No, see I started off in this thread chiding elucidator for starting us up again without damning evidence. How many times do I have to say “this was LEGAL”? Nope, far from “never be[ing] able to explain this one”, Bush, Harken and Harvard can just take your tack. (But of course, they’ve all chosen “no comment” so far.)
This may be my last post for a while. I’m going to go get drunk on a cruise ship for four days. Have fun calling me an ignoramus (or variation thereof) while I’m gone.
(And you, luci: don’t get in no mischief.)
Well let’s see. When faced with total defeat you could take the high road, or you could do this.
I did not say that Harken was in excellent shape. I said they had had profits, and that they had businesses and assets that were profitable and had tangible value.
Hopefully you will understand this distinction the first time, and save me having to repeat it 8 more times.
Being troubled and having profitable assets and businesses are not mutually exclusive propositions.
It appears that Harkens has profitable businesses, but was nevertheless in trouble because of debt.
This should be a concept familiar to anybody who has a good job, but nonetheless struggles to pay off a house, cars, or College education.
What they did is similar to a refinancing.
That you would try to read something sinister into this is laughable.
Nice try, but in your third post to this thread (it took you that long to compose a comprehensible OP), you painted this deal as an Enron-like transaction “with Bush’s fingerprints all over it.” You specifically accused him of creating “a temporary stock ‘bubble’ so that Certain Persons might sell out under ‘good news.’”
Except the facts don’t back up that accusation. This wasn’t an Enron-like transaction. It was a perfectly legit debt workout. There was nothing illegal or unethical about it.
So now you’re changing your story to say that (1) Bush was an uninvolved and (2) Bush is a doofus.
Well, as to (1), why do you care? Even if this was a bad transaction (and it wasn’t), if Bush was uninvolved then the “bad” characterization wouldn’t reflect on him. And if you just wanted to talk about nasty corporations without regard to Bush, and planned on using this as an example, why mention Bush at all?
Regarding (2), if anything, this transaction argues against the notion that Bush is stupid. Indeed, the fact that Bush could see that this deal was good for everyone affected and you can’t says something about his intellect relative to yours. Is it too much to ask that when you make an assertion that your cited examples actually back up that assertion?
Jesus Christ! This is you and Elucidator’s afterbirth, not mine.
If you wish to assert that Harvard went and got their asses handed to them as a result of this transaction than go out and find out if it’s true yourself. I’ve done enough straightening out your misrepresentations.
It’s a moot point anyway as to whether it worked out or not.
The Harvard Fund is a big boy, an accredited investor, managed by professional money managers. It is their job to decide whether the risk is prudent or not, and whether to take it or not. That is what they do, and built into their assumptions is the prospect that they will be wrong on occasion.
Their goal here was almost surely not to make a huge profit, but to rescue previous investment capital.
You keep insisting that you don’t see it, but that’s not because it’s not there. It’s right in front of your face in the article Elucidator cited. All you need to do is stop whining, and open your eyes.
Whether or not the original loans to Harken were an “obscene risk” is (1) a matter of judgment and (2) much easier to say in hindsight. Every investment entails a measure of risk. I’m pretty sure the loans seemed like a wise course of action at the time. The worst that can be said is that the Harvard Fund’s officers didn’t have crystal balls.
But, of course, it turned out that Harken’s debt ended up strangling it. So much so that Harken faced possible bankruptcy. Its creditors – including the Harvard Fund – were faced with being repaid next to nothing of what they were owed.
So you ask, “why was this a good deal for Harvard?” Well, this has been answered a bunch of times, but here goes:
It was good for Harvard because it kept Harken afloat. Absent the restructuring, Harvard gets zero dollars. By injecting some cash into Harken, Harvard increases the likelihood of getting repaid in full.
Here, let me make it as simple as I can:
Zero repayment = BAD
Full repayment = GOOD
Why this is so difficult for you to grasp is beyond me.
Did Harvard get its assets up to $100 billion by throwing good money after bad?
We quite obviously need a special prosecutor to look into this. Oops, the position doesn’t exist anymore.
:rolleyes:
If you think a business is experiencing short-term difficulties but will be profitable in the long term, and you are a creditor of that business, it is not “throwing good money after bad” to restructure the debt held by that business. You are, in fact, acting responsibly by taking steps to maximize your chances of being fully repaid.
If you think a business is going down the toilet regardless of how the debt is structured, then you take your chances in bankruptcy court. Then and only then would it be throwing good money after bad to continue injecting money into the company.**
And why, pray tell, would that be? No one was harmed by this transaction (see my post listing all the affected parties earlier in this thread). This was not an unusual debt workout. What, pray tell, was problematic about this transaction?
“Your failings” are all there ever was to the “matter at hand”.
There is nothing else to debate. You have presented no evidence, produced no logical argument, and been either involuntarily or deliberately obtuse when the facts have been explained to you.
What else is there to talk about? Another unfounded accusation by someone grimly determined that somehow or other, Bush has to be at fault. He has to be.
Bush is a crook, so he has to have done something wrong. We know he did something wrong, because he is a crook.
You had your nose rubbed in this for seven pages in the last thread. How often do you need it this time?
Regards,
Shodan
18 billion elvis. 18.3 to be precise.
Sheesh.
Anyway, I found an article in the Harvard Crimson on the Harken deal, whereing Meyer (who was one of the Harvard Fund’s Managers at the time) says.
“We didn’t lose money on Harken. We made money on Harken,” said Meyer, who has seen the endowment grow from $5 billion to $18 billion during his time at HMC.
The Crimson’s on the internet, so you can probably find it yourself.
Xeno and Elucidator haven’t let any of the other facts stand in the way, so I don’t see why this should change anything.
From Scylla
The high road, sir? Lets review: “ignoramuses” “afterbirth” “full of shit” and a few others.
“The high road”. Yes. Of course. That would be you. A veritable paragon of civil discourse. Uh-huh.
Scylla, Harvard’s total endowment has been rumored locally to be on the order of 100B, not 18. Whatever. Either number will make the point, though: They didn’t make it throwing good money after bad. Sheesh indeed.
Dewey, irony seems lost on you for some reason.
Elucidator:
It has been my profound experience in dealing with you, that a blunt tool is the best one in these kinds of matters.
Do you have a cite for that number? I recall several different instances of a valuation in July of this year of 18.3 billion, and the quote that I pulled from the Crimson backs that up.
I prefer that to rumor.
Anyway, if they made money on it, than it wasn’t good money after bad, was it?
Dewey, I thought I made it clear, but, upon review, I can see how you might have missed it.
When I originally posted this, I was under the mistaken impression that this all occured before Bush sold his shares. That is not the case, hence, there can be no “Bush is a crook”, beyond a perfectly natural desire to appear successful.
Beyond that, I can see a reasonable case to be made that this was all quite kosher. What I cannot see is your absolute and unmitigated determination that it simply must be so, that the facts of the matter admit of no other interpretation.
At best, that’s a bit of a stretch. Not an impossible stretch, mind you. But a stretch nonetheless, with every possible benefit of the doubt given. Clearly Mr. Black, who is apparently quite credentialed in this sort of thing, thinks otherwise.
To my mind, the matter remains in doubt. If this is sufficient for you to crow “victory!”, it would be churlish of me to spoil your fun.
Before I leave, here’s a gift. Link to a Harvard Crimson article date October 10, discussing the HarvardWatch report and the reactions to it.
A sample:
Y’all have fun.
And I suppose that nice old lady walking down the street might be an alien spy with a Kill-O-Zap gun. It’s possible.
Nobody is saying absolutely in deterministic fashion that she must be simply a little old lady.
However, when I see someone with the constant habit of pointing at little old ladys walking down the street and screaming shrilly that their purses are really ray guns, I think they deserve the scorn with which they recieve.
And that’s what you’ve become.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that the transaction is anything other than what it appears to be.
With the total absence of evidence or reasonable supposition to support it, it is foolish to make it.
You do not read well. Black says nor implies anything of the kind.
Doubtless he or any other professional in this field would greet your proposition with nothing but the scorn such blind foolishness deserves.