The whole letter is great, especially the slams at the aristocracy, but I liked this part:
Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870 percent gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana.
``Hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products,'' he wrote. ``Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term.''
`Innocuous Plant'
He added, ``The evil female plant -- marijuana. It gets you high, it makes you laugh, it does not produce a hangover. Unlike alcohol, it does not result in bar fights or wife beating. So, why is this innocuous plant illegal? Is it a gateway drug? No, that would be alcohol, which is so heavily advertised in this country.''
Lahde said the only reason marijuana remains illegal is because ``Corporate America, which owns Congress, would rather sell you Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax and other addictive drugs, than allow you to grow a plant in your home without some of the profits going into their coffers.''
Indeed. Although the guy needs a copy editor -- these days, "evil female" is redundant.
I forget where the Overton Window
is with the war on drugs these days. Both candidates firmly in favor, I trust?
- lambert's blog
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Am I the only one?
Who found the beginning of the letter kind of unseemly? Perhaps, I could have found something redeeming in him if he didn't play the game in the first place, but I can't praise someone who decided to play the game, make out with a killing, and then turning around to lecture, berate, and mock those that are still doing the very same things that he chose to do. Sorry, I can't go there. There is nothing noble or redeeming to me about what he decided to do after the fact, after he made out like a bandit.
I'll admit my bias; I think hedge fund managing is about as seedy a business as one can get in financial services (which, itself, has become seedy), an economic sector that has become so ridiculously meta it's not even funny. I simply don't have a lot of respect for this profession, and it pisses me off to no end that people dump on, say, the gaming industry when there is very little daylight between it and something like hedging. Hell, the term "hedging" comes from gaming.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Oh, the whole enterprise is unseemly
And seems to have a lot of the social consequences of gambling, er, "gaming", as well.
But the letter is great. Guy comes in from a non-Ivy school, takes the marks for a ton of money, and exits advocating legalizing marijuana -- as, reading between the lines, a cheap and effective replacement for the Xanax he's been on. What's not to like?
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi