Harvard letter on its endowment (as much as 30% drop for the year)

Boston Globe ^ | 12/03/08

[TigerLikesRooster]

Harvard letter on its endowment

/snip

Harvard Management Company, using standard industry practices for valuing assets, has calculated investment losses of approximately 22 percent from July 1 through October 31. Yet even that sobering figure is unlikely to capture the full extent of actual losses for this period, because it does not reflect fully updated valuations in certain externally managed asset classes, most notably private equity and real estate. HMC expects that as we receive more comprehensive valuations in these asset classes from our external managers, the endowment will realize further declines in value. With those considerations in mind, and in view of the uncertain outlook ahead, we continue to plan for a scenario in which our endowment is down 30 percent in value for the year. To put a loss of that size in historical context, over the last at least forty years, Harvard’s worst single-year endowment return was a negative 12.2 percent in 1974, and at that time our endowment stood at less than $1 billion and funded a much less significant proportion of University operations. Since that time, there have been only three years of negative performance, with returns ranging from -0.5 percent to -3 percent. We will of course hope to do better this year than we are now planning, but we need to plan with a clear-eyed view of the reality that confronts us, as best we can gauge it.

/snip

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[Tribune7]

Now, if only Harvard had given that surplus money to the government instead of investing in the private sector, they would not have this problem.

Oh, those greedy Harvard capitalist!!! Shame. Same, I say!!!

[dennisw]

LOL LOL LOL Serves them right to suffer

Mohammad Al Arian (on CNBC a lot and now at PIMCO) got out just in time

[TigerLikesRooster]

I know this is the news you have been waiting for many months.:-)

[Comparative Advantage]

I hate HAAAR-VARD. I hope they go bankrupt someday.

[dennisw]

I know this is the news you have been waiting for many months.:-)

Yeah baby!!!!!
If they say 30% lets hope they are low balling it and it's really 45%

Yale has been copiyng them for years so might be way down too.
Though I do not despise Yale

 

LOL LOL LOL

[YOUGOTIT]

Since they are an anti-American institution and will not allow military on their fascist campus I hope their money falls to 0.

[steelyourfaith]

Would that Harvard (all liberal academe, actually) demonstrate similar interest in the integrity of their academic program.

[TigerLikesRooster]

If that happens, count on Obama, a Harvard alumni(grad school?), to bail it out.

[ExTexasRedhead]

May they get nothing!!! Zero, nada.

[RichInOC]

Okay, I thought only African guys who’d been hoodooed had their endowments shrink that fast.

[TigerLikesRooster]

You can launch naked short on HMC.

[MrEdd]

More here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlkUyl3fjvs

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Well, there go Math 101 and Calculus. Not to worry: courses like “The Lesbian Harpist in Medieval Flanders” will still be available.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Well, if you rename Calculus as ‘Queer Power Calculus,’ it will be definitely funded. The first chapter should be devoted to all ‘gay Muslim’ Mathematicians real, imagined, (and suspected.):-)

[CondorFlight]

I at least give them credit for making this as public as possible.

Probably ALL university endowments have lost heavily.

But likely most of them continue to conceal that from their alumni, boards, etc.

[EVO X]

Easy come, easy go. They were up 8% at the end of June.

[stevem]

If the Federal Government is going to confiscate all the 401Ks, perhaps it should also confiscate all the college and university endowments.

[KarlInOhio]

The reason to take the 401ks is to keep people dependent on the government and thus make them more liberal. Since most colleges are already safely liberal they can keep their money. Now if there was just a way to take Hillsdale College's money without taking Harvard's.< /statist mode>