Do you feel refreshed? Are you excited for the New Year? Do you feel like it’s a brand new day? Well, guess what – it’s not “Morning again in America.”
Don’t be fooled. Just because the calendar has changed, things are still screwed up. But enough of what you already know; I have three things to say – my thoughts about what lies ahead for this New Year!
So what’s the plan? What’s the idea? What are you going to do this year that makes last year be gone and this year go forward? Here’s what I think:
1. It’s time to think about opportunities in all sorts of markets.
2. It’s time to think about getting out of old products and into new products.
3. It’s time to start paying attention to what’s going on in the world, not just the six feet around you.
You know, everyone’s talking about due diligence and transparency. Congress is currently holding hearings on hedge fund regulation, transparency and all that sort of nonsense to “get to the bottom” of what went wrong. I define it as nonsense because it is nonsense. It is nonsense because no matter how many rules, regulations or other barriers are put in place by the regulators, fraud and losses will still occur. The fact is, criminals are able to adapt and are able find ways to rip us off no matter what is front of them.
The fact that everyone demands transparency is silly, because at the end of the day, people don’t know what to do with the information once they get it. If you don’t believe me, ask one of the 8,000 or so victims of Mr. Madoff. The joke is that no matter what requirements or regulations Congress puts in place, they will only make the hedge fund industry stronger. This industry is not dead. It is alive and well. Mark my words. As long as there is a market there will be hedge funds.
That being said, if Congress and the powers-that-be really want to do something to bring about real change to the hedge fund industry, what they need to do is to require standardized reporting, whether it be monthly, quarterly, daily, weekly – I don’t know the answer. But if Congress wants to really affect the way hedge funds are used, viewed or controlled, what it needs to do is to require that all funds, regardless of size or strategy, report both returns and assets under management on a regular basis. This will be the foundation for bringing normalcy, consistency and transparency to hedge funds once and for all.
On that note, I have one more thing to add this week. I am starting a new section to the blog – “Things That Drive Me Crazy!” Each week (well, some weeks hopefully I won’t have anything to write about), I’m going to document one thing that has driven me crazy – either good or bad. Here’s the first:
Café Centro in the Met Life building at Grand Central Terminal charges $3.75 for each refill of ice tea, but does not charge for refills for hot tea or hot coffee. This is nuts in, my opinion, and while the food was pretty good earlier this week at lunch – I cannot in good conscience recommend going there. They clearly don’t care about consumers and so are not worthy of your or my money. There are better choices in the area.