What I simply want to do is point out one of the handful of billionaires in the world today, who are part of a pretty select group of people. These are the minds who were able to make, quite literally, hundred of billions, and over all, trillions, of dollars from around 1997/8 through till about 2008, when Lehman Bros., collapsed.
Kind of like a real life Gordon Gekko, this is the billionaire Noam Gottesman |
Bearing in mind that even from as early as just after the '89 Stock Market Crash (which was a real one), many markets had closed and never re-opened. Many types of financial market closed. People now tend to forget also, the so-called, at the time, 'Big Bang' in Europe, during which national Exchanges gave up their sovereign rights of management and issuance of capital through equities listings, to a Brussels and Frankfurt central committee. You would have been hard pressed to find an authorized market 'hedge' against an as-yet non-existent capital market and currency. In other words, Soros held what, exactly, versus the GBP? Not gold certainly. There has never been a published report anywhere suggesting which investors he bet against, which funds lost to him, and in which brokerages any trades were done. Surely such a brokerage would have reaped some fees. He wasn't a floor member of the LSE. How did it all happen? Presuming it happened at all.
But one of the striking things about the people who made billions around this time, is that they are all generally referred to in the media as 'hedge fund' managers or proprietors. The plain fact is, when you look at any of the data and available information about what positions they ever held, or what investing strategies they had, none of them hedged anything. The actual real hedges for their locations did not even exist in the first place at that time. I know. There were silent capital controls all across the world, even in the United States via massive and complex documentary requirements, that prevented any kind of rapid transmission either of investment position or cash and liquidities.
What was really being talked about, when it comes to the 'successful' funds, was that on the surface, all of them were able to have massive leverage from some source no one ever talks about. And by that I mean that no actual leverage was ever reflected in audited statements - what happened was financial paper, usually contractual, was held over some 'asset' and this contract became the financialized item, and the mechanism through which a value was assigned to something on a balance sheet, most of which balance sheets were actually completed and signed off well after proforma accounts were reported and which were permitted to serve as the accounts for a very long time until some future event turned the 'asset' into a realized financial position.
In the case of Lehman Bros., or for instance, the insurance contract on the World Trade Center, only after a formal bankruptcy of Lehman's, did someone walk away with a set of clients who originated from Lehman - and then absorb at no cost, that client list into their 'fund' - and after the insurance court case many years later, did a multi-billion dollar financial asset turn up on the books of someone with no other asset or means and reason of business.
So it is not correct to call any of these groups and people hedge funds or hedge fund managers. They did not hedge any base capital against some adverse movements of a market or market condition, and in most cases they never had any capital at all of their own to hedge in the first place nor any client' capital either.
No, they merely walked away with the furniture after the bomb hit.
Well, no. Actually, they started walking away well before the bomb hit.
Now I'm going to enter upon very problematic territory here, because what I am about to say, were it generally to be seen by the ordinary media and the large spectrum of public commentators - and that includes anyone too now who can post onto a YouTube response section - would be seized upon with a force.
For reasons that are unknown to me at this present moment, this body of genius hedge fund manager has been directly financially involved in sponsoring the recent 'gay equality' rights process which unfolded in the United States, though not all of the people are themselves gay, but I would say, easily ninety per cent of them are by self-claim.
I cannot ever divorce (lol) the motivation of money with these people, from anything they do as a group, and not only that, it is usually massive amounts of money that will end up being talked about.
Some great aesthetics here, but I know some gay males who disagree; except not Bruce Jenner |
I do not know Jan Wenn the owner of Rolling Stone Magazine personally but I have a lot of time for his integrity when it comes to his public politics - I'm not so moved by some of the magazine's aesthetics from time to time, but then, that's not the point. For I do, on the other hand have a lot of time for the aesthetic capability of Roubi L'Roubi the owner of London's Huntsman of Savile Row, whose current marriage to Pierre Lagrange places him firmly within the circle I have been referring to in the paragraphs above.
And I am going to tell you this too: not everyone whose name contains a 'le' or 'la' in it, are actually using their birth names, which can tend to be markedly less exotic.
Her husband Jay-Z is a good friend of Noam Gottesman |
And I know few will agree with me on this.
Nope. Indeed few will agree with me, I'm sure. However I would suggest that you keep your eyes opened and your wits about you over the next twelve months or so. Especially if you turn up at the wrought iron gates of a massive house in up-State New York or Hampshire, England, and you have brought along with you, for some absurd or unexplainable reason, a rented tux and cape and a domino mask or a Venetian one.