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Day 20 October, 2008

Entries 2 Total

So long, suckers

Oct 20, ’08 10:27 PM

Price­less. Andrew Clark, for the Guard­ian:

The boss of a suc­cess­ful US hedge fund has quit the industry with an extraordin­ary farewell let­ter dis­miss­ing his rivals as over-privileged “idi­ots” and thank­ing “stu­pid” traders for mak­ing him rich.

Yes­ter­day the 37-year-old told his cli­ents that he had hated the busi­ness and had only been in it for the money. And after declar­ing he would no longer man­age money for other people, because he had enough of his own, Lahde said that instead he inten­ded to repair his stress-damaged health; he made it clear he would not miss the fin­an­cial world.

“The low-hanging fruit, ie idi­ots whose par­ents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Har­vard MBA, was there for the tak­ing,” he wrote. “These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the edu­ca­tion they received (or sup­posedly received) rose to the top of com­pan­ies such as AIG, Bear Ste­arns and Leh­man Broth­ers and all levels of our gov­ern­ment,” he said.

“All of this beha­viour sup­port­ing the aris­to­cracy only ended up mak­ing it easier for me to find people stu­pid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”

Lahde became one of the biggest names in the invest­ment industry when one of his funds pro­duced a return of 866% last year, largely by fore­cast­ing the US home loans industry would collapse.

In his farewell let­ter, which con­cluded with an appeal for the leg­al­isa­tion of marijuana, Lahde said he was happy with his rewards and did not envy those who had made even more money.

“I will let oth­ers try to amass nine, 10 or 11 fig­ure net worths. Mean­while, their lives suck,” he wrote, cit­ing a life of back-to-back busi­ness appoint­ments relieved only by a two-week annual hol­i­day in which fin­an­ci­ers are still “glued to their Blackberries”.

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The 11th Hour, a must see documentary

Oct 20, ’08 9:58 PM

The 11th Hour film posterThe 11th Hour is a doc­u­ment­ary film, co-written and nar­rated by Leonardo DiCaprio, but don’t let that put you off. This is one of the best envir­on­mental doc­u­ment­ar­ies I’ve seen and DiCaprio does a fine job.

Inter­mingled with a rous­ing mont­age of earthly images and audio, the back­bone of the film is a series of inter­views with over fifty politi­cians, sci­ent­ists, and envir­on­mental act­iv­ists — includ­ing Stephen Hawk­ing and David Suzuki—who clev­erly explain the com­plex bind we’re in, how we got here and how we might get out of it.

It’s a treas­ure trove of quot­able dia­logue, and after detail­ing the down right depress­ing situ­ation we’re in and the obstacles we need to over­come, the most inspir­ing stuff comes in the last seg­ment where we are presen­ted not only with prac­tical ideas and solu­tions for the future but with a whole new way of look­ing at our situ­ation; this gem from Paul Hawken:

The great thing about the dilemma we’re in is that we get to reima­gine every single thing we do. In other words there isn’t one single thing that we make or sys­tem that we have that doesn’t require a com­plete remake, and so there are two ways of look­ing at that. One is, like, oh my gosh, you know, what a big bur­den. The other way to look at it, which is the way I prefer, is what a great time to be born, what a great time to be alive, because this gen­er­a­tion gets to essen­tially com­pletely change this world.

If I was a film­maker this is the film I’d like to make.

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