Next, a politician with the stones to call out said shameless visiting foreign politician, and his colleagues in Congress for their idiocy:

And there’s this – a certifiable moron, who actually makes Michael Savage sound reasonable by comparison, no small feat:

Salient points:

• Immigration is not the same as illegal immigration.
• Immigration without assimilation destroys countries.
• Illegal immigrants have the right to be sent home, humanely & quickly, perhaps to get into line and become legal immigrants, at which point they’re welcome.
• Be wary of anyone who conflates opposition to illegal immigration with racism, or with opposition to immigration itself. They’re trying to trick you, and intentionally or not, are trying to destroy this country.

Repeat – They’re trying to trick you. Don’t be tricked.

– Robert Heinlein

Having extensive experience in the waste industry, I’ve never been a fan of consumer (curbside) recycling. It’s a completely different business than the trash business.

The trash business is simple – fee for service. You pay someone to come and pick up your trash. They take it away and either burn it or bury it. Fee for service.

Recycling, as it’s done today? Not so simple – it’s a commodity play, basically a bet that they can pick up your allegedly recyclable cast-offs, and a market will exist in which the person who picked them up can sell them (after cleanup/aggregation/processing) for more than it cost to perform the collection, separation, and processing.

A very different business from trash collection. And as I used to say back when I was in the waste business, if someone wanted to be in that commodity business, more power to them, but I couldn’t understand the idiocy by which municipalities asserted common ground between that business and recycling. I was further dismayed to find that trash companies took the bait and accepted this absurd bastardization of their business. There’s at least one former company in the industry (Browning Ferris Industries, now a fully-digested part of Allied Waste, which is itself now a fully digested part of Republic Waste), a true blue-chipper, and a great company in its time, which was utterly undone by the idiocy of pretending that recycling was the business it was in.

Why the idiocy? Because of the actions of a misdirected board, the chairman of which, former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus, decided BFI should pretend to save the world, while destroying the business at which it actually excelled. He did some good things while in that slot – breaking the back of organized crime in the New York market is one of those. I can think of no others, and his actions ultimately killed the company’s ability to operate as a viable standalone entity. His recycling mantra was the murder weapon.

I was reminded of all of this from the Ace of Spades post previously mentioned. From it, I traversed a link to the interesting Sippican Cottage website. (be sure to read his “About Me” snippet). And from that link, a reminder of the several-years-old Penn & Teller “Bullshit” segment on the idiocy of recycling, notwithstanding the fervor of the idiots who believe in its value, below.

Lots of things make sense to recycle. Oddly enough though, virtually every one of those things happens to be an individual aluminum can. Almost everything else is a waste of time and effort, on both economic and environmental grounds. Curbside recycling, outside of aluminum cans, is counterproductive make-work, worth nothing other than the psychic self-stimulation it provides to misinformed consumers and maladjusted recycling coordinators. We’re not now, nor have we ever been, running out of landfill space, and landfills are now and remain the most effective and safe way to deal with the nation’s garbage.

Other things will come along which can rationally be used to reduce volume going into landfills, but when they do, it’ll be because there’s an economically justifiable method for recapturing value from the items that would otherwise be buried in the ground. Mechanically separating waste streams, while hoping that the market for the resulting commodities doesn’t crash while you’re baling them up and praying for an opportunity to sell them, has a flaw in it:

As with any human activity, if you can’t find an economic justification to do it, with only a very few exceptions, you shouldn’t be doing it.

I’ve incorporated it here in its entirety because it’s so short and so important that I want to ensure it remains close at hand.

Is Health Care a Right?

Most politicians, and probably most Americans, see health care as a right. Thus, whether a person has the means to pay for medical services or not, he is nonetheless entitled to them. Let’s ask ourselves a few questions about this vision.

Say a person, let’s call him Harry, suffers from diabetes and he has no means to pay a laboratory for blood work, a doctor for treatment and a pharmacy for medication. Does Harry have a right to XYZ lab’s and Dr. Jones’ services and a prescription from a pharmacist? And, if those services are not provided without charge, should Harry be able to call for criminal sanctions against those persons for violating his rights to health care?

You say, “Williams, that would come very close to slavery if one person had the right to force someone to serve him without pay.” You’re right. Suppose instead of Harry being able to force a lab, doctor and pharmacy to provide services without pay, Congress uses its taxing power to take a couple of hundred dollars out of the paycheck of some American to give to Harry so that he could pay the lab, doctor and pharmacist. Would there be any difference in principle, namely forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another? There would be one important strategic difference, that of concealment. Most Americans, I would hope, would be offended by the notion of directly and visibly forcing one person to serve the purposes of another. Congress’ use of the tax system to invisibly accomplish the same end is more palatable to the average American.

True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of non-interference. If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.

For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else’s rights, namely their rights to their earnings. The reason is that Congress has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy giving them those resources. The fact that government has no resources of its very own forces one to recognize that in order for government to give one American citizen a dollar, it must first, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

To argue that people have a right that imposes obligations on another is an absurd concept. A better term for new-fangled rights to health care, decent housing and food is wishes. If we called them wishes, I would be in agreement with most other Americans for I, too, wish that everyone had adequate health care, decent housing and nutritious meals. However, if we called them human wishes, instead of human rights, there would be confusion and cognitive dissonance. The average American would cringe at the thought of government punishing one person because he refused to be pressed into making someone else’s wish come true.

None of my argument is to argue against charity. Reaching into one’s own pockets to assist his fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pockets to do so is despicable and deserves condemnation.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Granted, those pushing the current federalization of the American healthcare system may truly believe that healthcare is a right. If they do, they’re wrong, just as they’d be wrong to claim that everyone has an innate right to any tangible, finite product or service of which others would have to be deprived in order to provide it to them.

But I don’t think any of the Obamacare pushers truly have an opinion about healthcare as a right. This headlong rush to socialization isn’t about rights, and it’s clearly not about reducing costs. It’s about control. Control of the quantity and quality of service that Americans can choose to purchase, from whom, and via what methods.

Picture this: Say the cost of hamburgers increased 15% per year over a 20 year period, and as a result, some people could no longer afford hamburgers as often as they’d previously become used to. Pretend further that, unlike in our current framework of healthcare provision, there wasn’t a requirement that all burger joints had to provide hamburgers at their emergency drive-up window, regardless of ability to pay.

Would declaring hamburgers to be a basic human right, and stating that the federal government should exercise market control of hamburgers, suddenly become an argument that would pass the giggle test? Of course not.

And it amazes me to see that the argumentational artifice of “healthcare as a basic human right” passes that same test. If it didn’t, people would spend the time that they should be spending asking what our elected overlords are really trying to accomplish.

This ain’t about healthcare, people. It’s just not.

BOSTON—A little-known Republican shook up the balance of power in Washington by winning a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, a result that imperils President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities and augurs trouble for his party in this year’s elections.

Cast beneath the front page story, these three bullets, pointing to stories I’m not linking here:

• Independent Voters Abandon Democrats
• Americans Weary of Government Intervention
• Democrats Set Plan to Pass Health Bill

It could just be me, but one of those items doesn’t belong with the others, and in fact represents the root problem for which I hope Senator Brown’s election is the first solution step.

The Democrats, in sole control of the levers of government, are committing slow-motion suicide, and don’t seem to care. I hope, for the sake of the country, the sake of our political system, and frankly, the sake of the Democrats, that they don’t make the ignorant mistake of trying to whistle past this particular graveyard.

Oh, and Martha/Marcia (Go Patches! Do that dynasty proud!) Coakley? Perhaps the worst, most tin-eared, foot-in-mouth candidate ever.

Stable home prices may be overrated. Every month that there is an artificial barrier that prevents real estate prices from falling faster is a month that the market does not reach rock bottom, and rock bottom prices are what eventually bring buyers into the market. Real estate prices are being destroyed by the current “hundred year storm” in the industry and buyers will find the bargains irresistable, even if mortgages rates are not at a historic low. The government can draw out that process unnecessarily instead of standing aside as it takes it natural course.

The taxpayer will write a check to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the name of keeping real estate prices from falling. That taxpayer might buy a house with his check, but the government is keeping home prices too high.

Everyone (well, some people anyway, the ones who were paying attention, not including those who were playing the game) worried about the clearly-building bubble in the real estate market. Poof! Turns out it was real.

And now, those who should have taken action (Greenspan’s folksy alleged wisdom notwithstanding) are blowing as hard as they can, attempting to reflate the bubble. Marvelous.

In 2004, Stephen Roach was quoted: (Economist)

…the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, has long argued that the Fed is a “serial bubble blower”. Its cheap money is stimulating another round of irrational exuberance. America’s property market certainly looks pricey: the ratio of house prices to incomes is currently at a record high, and about a fifth above its 30-year average.

He was right then, and it’s still true today. Clearly, they’re at it again.

To avoid gloom and doom? Too late – that already occurred, and should have been left, in late 2008, to burn itself out by whatever means necessary. Stretching the pain of the adjustments over the next 30 years is not preferable to allowing the markets to have regained equilibrium on their own.

To assure affordable housing for everyone? As any economist, observer of recent history, or both should be able to point out, the fact that everyone with a pulse was allowed to purchase a home, even when many would clearly have been better served to rent or live with their parents, did nothing but goose the price of real estate to the point where it not only became unaffordable to all those this magical low price was supposed to help, it ALSO cratered the financial system.

Great work, Fed/Treasury (but I repeat myself). Give yourselves a pat on the back. And then get the hell out of the market. You’re killing us.

—– Quote —–
“President Barack Obama’s economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan,” the Associated Press reports.

Hey, great news! Just one little problem: “Only 508 people work there.” The story continues:

The Georgia nonprofit’s inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government’s latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an “extensive review” to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren’t saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.

You read that right: Civil servants got pay raises, and the Obama administration claims credit for “saving” their jobs:

Officials defended the practice of counting raises as saved jobs.
“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

Aren’t you excited to think that these people may soon be in charge of your health care?

—– End Quote —–

One of several possibilities seems obvious here:
1. These guys are idiots
2. These guys think we’re idiots
3. Both

The short-selling ban that is in place from yesterday through October 2 (or later) is an abomination. Not only is it bad policy in an absolute sense, it’s made worse by the cynical hypocrisy of those who begged for it to be put into place.

It’s one thing for an amiable boob like Patrick Byrne to whine about short-sellers and how they’re killing his company. I’m willing to give Byrne some small measure of benefit of the doubt, since finance isn’t his claim to fame. But when the chairmen of the Federal Reserve and the SEC, along with the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, now Treasury Secretary, start whining out of the same hymn book, they’re not serious, not believable, and are clearly playing to the idiots in the audience.

Short selling, the act of selling shares you don’t own, with the expectation that you’ll be able to buy them back later at a price equal to or lower than the price at which you sold the. Simple, really. And it’s got nothing to do with wanting to harm the company whose shares you’ve sold short. It’s simply an expression of opinion that the shares are overvalued, for one reason or another.

Selling short, then spreading false rumors against a company is an offense for which one can be pursued in a court of law. Funny thing, though – not selling short, then spreading false rumors against a company is also an offense for which one can be pursued in a court of law. If you do the verbal algebra, it becomes clear that selling short has nothing to do with the illegality of false rumors. And the law recognizes this – selling short is, in anything approaching sane regulatory times, not illegal at all.

Selling short can occur for many reasons, in many different contexts. Everyone I’ve read focuses on bets that a stock might or should go down. I’ll go you one better. For instance, to take a random example, let’s just say that the Investment Banking group in Goldman Sachs’ Chicago office were doing a public offering of stock for a client.

Such offerings typically include an underwriter’s option for an additional 15% of the shares being offered as “the green shoe”, to cover overallocations. Since an investment bank typically has no interest, and certainly has no requirement, to be an owner of stock in the companies for which it provides underwriting, if an offering looks successful, and the demand is high enough to make exercising their option for the “green shoe”, the normal action an investment bank takes is to sell short a number of shares equal to the amount of the green shoe, knowing that they’ll be able to replace those shares with the additional 15% for overallocation. If the stock has run up in the aftermath of the offering, better still – they can sell stock that’s more expensive than the offering price, knowing full well that they can replace it at the offering price. But at a minimum, they already know the price at which they can buy the stock in the future, so this isn’t a bet that the stock will go down.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, having been the head of investment banking for Goldman Sachs’ Midwest Region (1983-1988), then managing partner of the Chicago office, followed by co-head of IB for the entire firm, can safely be presumed to know all of this.

Neither SEC Chairman Cox and Fed Chairman Bernanke has any experience in capital markets, but neither of them can assert ignorance of the role that short selling plays in the market.

And who’s been calling loudest for limitations on short selling? The investment banks, solvent and formerly-solvent:

Lehman:

Lehman executives complain that they have been singled out by hedge fund investors that are short selling — or betting against — their stock, and Mr. Fuld has called senior executives at competitor banks demanding that their employees stop criticizing Lehman.

Morgan Stanley:

The mood was far different at Morgan Stanley, which lobbied vigorously for the ban on short selling. The bank’s shares shot up 21 percent, to $27.21, on Friday. Analysts said the reprieve might be only temporary, though, because the firm’s business model still requires a big balance sheet and core base of deposits for financing.

Goldman Sachs:

…the SEC is this afternoon holding a meeting to “determine if they need to take further steps to curtail what both Mac and [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein characterize as improper short selling that is really causing damage to the share price of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.” Blankfein also spoke with Cox to complain of short selling of their stock, as did New York senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, according to Gasparino’s sources.

And so on. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, AIG, and a host of others, all now functionally dead as public companies, claimed loudly, with much gesticulation, that short sellers, not their crappy business models or abysmal risk management, were the reason for the drops in their stock prices.

New York’s AG Andrew Cuomo:

Likening such traders to “looters after a hurricane,” New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Thursday said his office is investigating “a significant number” of complaints about improper short selling in shares of Lehman Bros., AIG, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other financial stocks.

Cuomo said his investigation would use the New York state Martin Act, which subjects violators to criminal as well as civil penalties, to combat the illegal practices.

“The markets need to be stabilized,” Cuomo said. “And one way to bring about such stability is to root out and deter short-selling that is based on the spread of false information.”

Sorry, Spanky – you left one class of people out: Weather forecasters before a hurricane. Deter short selling based on the spread of false information? Sure – go ahead, although there are already laws in place to do that, so knock yourself out enforcing them, with my blessing and encouragement. Disallow short selling itself, as though there’s no valid reason for a non-rumor-spreading trader to do? Utterly stupid. And impressive only to the self interested (the banks) or ill-educated (all other non-bankers who’ve complained about short selling).

Applauded only by the greedy & ignorant? Must be a great plan, then. I’ll take all this addle-pated nonsense about “gangs of people getting together to sell shares of a stock” seriously when several things also happen:

• The same idiots decide to go after “gangs of people getting together to buy shares of a stock” (Cramer – I’m looking at you and everyone like you).
• Someone explains to me the difference between a short seller selling a share of stock and an actual holder of the stock selling a share of stock. The market neither knows nor cares.
• Which raises the question of what’s next? Disallowing down-ticks entirely? Disallowing any sale of the stocks of the protected 799 alleged-financial companies? Even by widows and orphans who actually hold shares? What is this, the Hotel California?

“Issue Two” (please read that to yourself in John McGlaughlin’s voice, for best effect)


The details of the proposed bail-out for the deadlocked financial system are not yet clear, but one among them, the aforementioned short sale ban, has already torched a number of market participants otherwise undeserving of being torched.

Full disclosure: I’m one of the undeserving torchees. While I’m still up more than 25% this year, three weeks ago I was up more than 70%, and my results have suffered from the several recent bouts of unhinged euphoria-despair-euphoria. Lehman’s going bust, AIG might follow? Market crashes. Government may bail out AIG? Market recovers. Government may bail out AIG (yeah, I repeat myself)? Market crashes. Government might bail out the entire decomposing carcass of the financial system, but just for good measure, decides to stop the recognition, if not the reality, of the rot by banning short sales? Market recovers.

And Monday, when the reality of the market-saving gambit by the SEC/Fed/Treasury becomes more clear, the market will definitely either crash or soar. It surely won’t stay still, because whatever plan is mooted, someone will love it, hate it, or see a conspiracy to mulct the taxpayers for the benefit of Wall Street and the Main Street banks.

Put me squarely into the later two categories. For years, the financial sector has been spinning ever-more complex products for sale both the individuals and institutions, and has been paid handsomely for creating the damage from which they now suffer. Please also have a look at the story at Gawker, “It’s The “Absurd Financial Product Some Rich Person Actually Bought” Contest!”, from which the Blue Cow Faceplant picture above came.

Any solution that fails to meet the following criteria, in my opinion, should occasion the modern-day equivalent of street protests with flames and pitchforks in Washington DC:

• Any institution who decides to place “toxic assets” into government care should pay a severe penalty, in terms of the haircut they take on the deal. For instance, when Merrill Lynch sold CDOs to Lone Star, they got 22 cents on the dollar, and provided 75% financing. (see also this, from Fortune). This sets a nice benchmark. An upper benchmark, that is.
• The issue that Cox/Bernanke/Paulson are trying to solve isn’t to restore the banks’ balance sheets to their former luster and size, but instead to remove the shame and stink of the reams of bad assets contained therein, which cause all of the market participants to mistrust each other. They each know how badly they’ve damaged their own financial positions, and what they’ve not yet disclosed or taken write-downs on, and they assume, probably correctly, that all other participants have done the same. Nobody wants to be the first to drop their drawers and embarrass themselves. They should all be forced to fully disclose their positions in everything, market reaction be damned.
• The result of this will be the shrinkage or disappearance of many or all such participants, and any who stay out of the rescue pool will either already be transparently clean and problem free, or will be ostracized like the financial lepers they are.
• This shrinkage of concentration in the financial services market should not only be accepted, it should be encouraged. Many small firms, each small enough to fail without adverse consequences to the economy as a whole, are far preferable to a handful of mega-firms without whom, we’re encouraged to delude ourselves, we can’t exist.
• The final package must be free of the standard Washington give-and-take back-scratching, the sort that has nothing to do with the problem at hand. West Virginia, for instance, doesn’t need any more federally funded assets with Robert Byrd’s name on them, his certain protestations to the contrary. They should get in, fix what needs fixin, and get the hell out.
• The final package must, absolutely must, contain provisions to counteract moral hazard. In particular, these would include things like the warrants for 80% of AIG shares that go with the government’s backstop financing for the ailing insurance behemoth. If AIG’s holders are able to replace the financial backstop (as well they might, given a credit system which again works as it should), then they can prevent exercise of the warrants. But if they can’t, their equity goes poof!, just as it should. Some similar disincentive to sloth must be a precondition for participation on the part of all those who dump toxic assets into whatever cauldron the government provides. Something like Bill Ackman’s prescription for Fannie and Freddie wouldn’t trouble me at all.

I’m old enough now that I should be well beyond hearing simple phrases made up of well-known words but that cause me to say “Yeah. That’s what it is!”. But “privatized profits, socialized losses” is just such a phrase that’s crept into the common lexicon in recent months. For all I know, it’s been in wide use for many years, and I just missed it.

But that’s the problem that the US must avoid, otherwise we’ll turn into a shell of our former economic selves. And we’ll deserve the ignominy.

First, there was the Emperor AG and Premier Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, getting his, and a reasonable person could hope he’s got still more coming to him, given the pompous hypocrisy of the crusades on which he embarked before his fall.

Today’s news, however, on Alaska’s Ted Stevens, is equally satisfying to read. Charged with public corruption, and seemingly certain to be found guilty given the brazen and entitled nature with which he sought the spoils of his office, the only shame here might be that, at 86 years old, he’s unlikely to be incarcerated for the term he deserves, if at all. He’s been a national joke, most recently at least, for the Bridge to Nowhere pork fiasco, and his indictment cements his status as an embarrassment to Alaskans, Republicans, the Senate, and Americans.

Most people think that there’s a general presumption of innocence in America, but that’s only true within the court system, and in the issues that surround the court. I’m happy to report that my odds of serving on any jury of Mr. Stevens’ peers are zero, and I’m neither the judge nor the prosecutor in his case, so I owe him no such presumption.

He’s dirty, and the only thing better than having him indicted and removed from office would be to step back forty years, and take he and all other grandees of his sort out of the political process entirely. Glad-handing thieves, selling the citizens’ best interests for their personal aggrandizement, are among the lowest forms of life in America.

The focus of the story was on a small Washington DC based fund that’s done poorly of late.

Blue Fund Group is having a rough year.

Blue Investment Management LLC, the fund group’s Washington, D.C., investment adviser, has liquidated Blue Small Cap Fund, which managed less than $1 million.

It is now in the process of changing the name of its Blue Large Cap Fund, which has a little more than $10 million in assets, to, simply, Blue Fund. So far this year, that fund has underperformed both its large-cap growth category and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, according to Chicago investment-research firm Morningstar Inc.

Odd, that. Not the results, particularly, but the fact that the story appears at all. “What’s the problem?”, I wondered, and what makes this tiddler of a fund worthy of coverage in the WSJ? I read on…

In addition, in a rather odd development, $9.5 million of the large-cap fund’s assets were invested recently by a trust that has said it may hedge its bets on some of the fund’s holdings.

Blue Investment Management was formed in 2006 to invest in companies that “act blue” and “give blue,” those that engage in practices consistent with progressive values and give the majority of their political contributions to Democratic candidates.

Following a proprietary managed index of U.S. companies, the large-cap fund invests in “blue” companies in the S&P 500 index, while the small-cap offering had invested in “blue” companies in the Russell 2000 index.

Additional info, according to an April 2007 article at Morningstar:

The Blue funds (Blue Large Cap and Blue Small Cap), launched late last year, invest in companies that give a majority of their political contributions to Democratic candidates and organizations, in addition to passing various standard social screens. There are no funds focused specifically on Republican-leaning companies, though the Free Enterprise Action fund (FEAOX), launched two years ago, promotes free enterprise and opposes shareholder resolutions that might dampen companies’ profitability, including most SRI-type proposals. Also, the Camco Investors Fund (CAMCX) specifically uses socially conservative screening criteria, as do several of the religious funds we looked at in our earlier column, notably the Ave Maria and Timothy Plan funds.

Quintuple odd.

No “Republican-focused” funds? Because nobody would buy them, I presume, preferring instead to just focus on companies well-situated to make money.

Aside from the fact that the new biggest investor in Blue Funds may choose to hedge its bet, taking contrary positions to that of its now-majority owned fund, the slack-jawed investment thesis behind the fund is a real eye opener.

How is it, I wonder, that someone was able to correlate the political contribution tendencies of companies, and then to target them for investment? Wait – I’m not done yet: Of course it’s simple, though a bit labor-intensive, to do such a thing, but having done such a thing, how could someone have done such a bang up job of choosing a thesis with a correlation apparently approaching -1? And then put client money behind such a spastic idea? And still slept at night?

It’s possible to grotesquely overthink investment theses, even when, unlike the strategists of the Blue Fund, you leave political proclivities out of the mix. Running such a tiny fund, and apparently running it nearly into the ground, causing closure of the “small cap” side of the fund, abandonment of the “large cap” moniker on the other half, and causing the new largest investor (sort of) to consider hedging its exposure to your attempts at splitting atoms with your mind (and political views) seems like an item one would leave off one’s resume.

The same goes for all “Socially Responsible Investing”, if you ask me, not that you did.

Unless, of course, the goal isn’t to make money at all.

Granted, it’s been a tough year in the markets, but it’s not been impossible to make money. For comparative purposes, one of the things I do on a daily basis, with a very small portion of my time, is participate in running a proprietary hedge fund. The assets under management seem similar to those reported for the Blue Fund family by the WSJ, yet our focus is solely on making profits. And overall, we’re up more than 40% so far this year.

It’s not impossible, and properly done, it’s not even particularly difficult. The difference might be that there’s no ideology behind our investment choices, and no attempts at claiming correlations that don’t exist in the real world.

There’s nothing wrong with social, or political, responsibility. Neither has much of anything to do with investing, however. I don’t invest to help those in need or to advance a political point of view – I invest to make profits. To help those in need, I give to the Red Cross. And to advance a political point of view, I vote.

In investing, as in many other things, avoiding confusion about why you’re doing it is a fundamental prerequisite to being even mildly competent.

Tags: Blue+Fund+Group, Ideology, Investing