It may be the most unbearable email one could possibly write.
It's satire, the disclosure statement is a giveaway. I'm humorlessly stating the obvious, right?
IMO paying attention to personality defects is not the right approach. These guys are not used car salesmen or comp lit professors, their bad decisions affect real people. Making them out to be clowns rather than harmful parasites helps them.
Slampiece.
Slam. Piece.
[To be read in the manner of Owen Wilson saying. "Wildcat. Wild...cat. RAAARRRR."]
The comments describe the "disclosure" signature as "standard frat boilerplate."
These are not the evil people you need to worry about. It's the successful, not buffoonish, hedge fund that matters.
The disclosure statement looks like the kind of lame parody of disclosure statements a bro would add to all his emails because he thinks he's funny. It doesn't indicate at all that this isn't a real offer to work at a real hedge fund. Also, Breslow at Jezebel says she has identified the father.
I am completely baffled why Jezebel felt the need to preserve this loon's anonymity.
6: What makes you think the financially successful aren't this personally buffoonish as well?
The hedge fund bro who is in my program for tax purposes is not buffoonish. He seems pretty nice, actually, except of course he is really quite evil.
The behavior described in this book and the lawsuits it reports on was all conducted by succesful traders at major firms. Why isn't this email just evidence that things haven't changed on Wall Street?
Put differently, these guys will lose lots of money before marrying a moderately attractive blonde at 25 and having a mediocre career in commercial real estate which they endure in mild desperation. Meanwhile some non-clown physics major at the same school who is able to talk consciously of his "privilege," has a Le Tigre album on his computer, and reads Jezebel occasionally at his girlfriend's instigation, will put thousands out of work by manipulating, say, the futures market in bauxite.
I guess they all won't marry the same blonde at the same time.
The hedge fund bro who is in my program for tax purposes
Weird.
7. Disagree, there are complete sentences and more words than necessary, reads like a writer's joke not a moron's. Everything's spelled and punctuated correctly, serious diction except for one objectionable and unusual word. Also dated 2011.
Why isn't this email just evidence that things haven't changed on Wall Street?
The guy who wrote the email (assuming it is real) doesn't work on Wall Street. It's at least possible that's related to the fact that he's an insufferable tool, which could have come through in interviews.
(OTOH, he *is* coming out of fraternity culture, likely at a prestigious private school. That's also where a whole lot of Wall Street comes from, so there's probably a good deal of cultural overlap.)
15: it really is! He has to miss class all the time so he can fly his netjets share back to NYC (where he actually lives) or Texas, making sure he doesn't spend too much time in any one place (I think he keeps his residency in Texas for tax reasons?).
Actual objectionable opinion and prose style from Wall Street types is available in the comments at dealbreaker. The site veers unpredictably between unpleasant pointlessness, intentionally informative inside baseball commentary, and unintentionally informative remarks about what people who do this for a living think is funny or objectionable.
15, 18: Sort of the Hotblack Desiato model of "Spending a year dead for tax purposes."
IIRC we talked about this guy before and had a hard time figuring out what the actual tax scam was and how it worked.
18 puts me in mind of that head-exploding article in the New Yorker in the last two years about the slampiece who had to hustle out to East Egg by midnight howevermany times a year so he didn't have to pay the city tax.
21: yes. And I might be wrong, and he just has a profound and abiding interest in Science. But that last theory is not convincing to me.
these guys will lose lots of money before marrying a moderately attractive blonde at 25 and having a mediocre career in commercial real estate which they endure in mild desperation.
I'm not sure why you think this. Lose money? Yes, possibly (or possibly not--there are plenty of mediocre people in the industry who make money getting lucky--and if you're well positioned you can make a fortune in a lucky year), although that will mostly be other people's money that's lost, not their own. And I don't mean the trust fund money--I mean investor money. The kid will surely also burn through his trust fund at a healthy clip, but there's probably more where that came from, if you know what I mean. Dad will dole cash out in similarly moderate mid-seven-figure sums over the course of son's life, and then eventually dad will kick the bucket and son will inherit a bundle. No mediocre commercial real estate anywhere in the picture. And an unending stream of slampieces along the way.
Also, almost unrelatedly, most commercial real estate developers--if they have easy access to capital--make a pretty painless killing. Not hedge fund money (generally), but well into crazy wealthy territory.
23 cont'd: my going theory has been he figured out a way to endow a charitable trust to fund his own research/tuition.
Sifu: Are you sure he isn't just in the program for resume-padding? That seems most likely (moreso than some difficult-to-imagine tax scam). Impressive technical-sounding resumes for fund managers do a lot to help bring in investor money.
I thought that the risk of failure in real estate was pretty high-- lots of people had borrowed money to build in Phoenix or Las Vegas in 2008.
Most people trying to build are small and barely in business, though most buildings are put up by people who have already had some success, and who can maybe afford one failure.
Genuinely curious, are hedge funds to be distinguished morally from the rest of Wall Street? Even institutional investors go for private equity and CDOs (or whatever the new equivalent is) and other slash-and-burn investments.
I thought that the risk of failure in real estate was pretty high
The risk of failure on any particular project can be fairly high, especially since projects are almost always significantly leveraged. So any even temporary unexpected dip in income can cause a default with the bank. For a small operator, that may ruin them. Someone with some net worth can just write off the loss and move on.
27: maybe? It isn't remotely relevant to the stuff his fund does, and anyhow I think he no longer owns that fund. (Might still be on the board?)
I mean, I'm sure he's not, like, totally uninterested in the science. It would be a very weird way to spend five years if he was.
31, so, to paraphrase, academia is pretty easy once you get tenure ?
33: that's really a wonderful analogy, yes. Going into almost any business career with personal wealth is very much like starting an academic career with tenure.
In the hoax/not-hoax debate, I am torn. I think both sides make persuasive points. Someone must resolve this!
(Some developers seem to thrive on always doing the biggest project they can scrape together enough capital to do, so that every success is bigger than the last, but they're always one bad project away from going broke. Those people do often eventually go broke. (Although "broke" here is a relative term, since they've usually by that point got well-above-average assets squirreled away somewhere).)
If you google the disclaimer you will see it used as a sig by various more-or-less bro-ish dopes, so presumably it's just a funny thing that goes around.
I would feel more confident that it was not a hoax if the name of the author were not redacted. The name redaction makes it feel a bit like an urban legend.
It is quite common in this google group.
(Which google group seems to be some set of distinctly bro-ish Steinford grads; A CLUE?)
In comments, someone links this tumblr with the item dated a year ago. Not sure if that makes it more or less likely to be authentic.
"slampiece" as a query returns nothing in that group. Again, OP carefully punctuated and written, only places where diction drops is to use a funny word or spell out in a lot of detail that there is no actual work to be done.
The phrase "handshaking with industry bigwigs" sounds wrong to me. This is really clearly satire-- people who are lazy and stupid show it quickly when they write: I've been getting texts on texts about people LITERALLY being so fucking AWKWARD and so fucking BORING.
42: Hmm, tumblr proprietor also from the Ford of the Steins.
39-40: The comments at Jezebel include someone purporting to be a recent Steinford grad and who obliquely identifies the supposed author a little further down from the linked comment. (And suggests that the email did in fact circulate, but that its author claimed it was satirical.) Given the established awfulness of the supposed author's father, and the currency of this "disclosure" among bros from that particular university, it seems fairly plausible to me.
On that tumblr the fraternity is SAE; SAE has a chapter at Stanford. Two of the members of that fraternity are Paul Morrissey and Diego Villareal; there are also a Paul Morrissey and Diego Villareal on SF-LADS. It was hella some dude from that frat.
Ezra Klein seems to think it's real. That's good enough for me.
46 sorta pwned but my amazing deductive reasoning stands. I don't know why the frat website lists that kid as a sophomore, but anyhow.
This is suppoed to be Phil Knight's son? Or is my detective work failing?
48: looks like the frat website is out of date; googling others listed as sophomores puts them in the class of 2012.
49: failing.
42: The email in the OP is dated "Fri, 09 Dec 2011".
O6ersd0rf, if the J poster recycling 3d-party info is correct. I'm prepared to beleive that an undergrad from there wrote it, maybe even one with an inheritance.
But a) this isn't a real effort to start a business and b) personality and unrealistic stories are IMO a distraction, pace 12.
personality and unrealistic stories are IMO a distraction
They are not a distraction from the point that inherited wealth is a great injustice staining our society, which, to the extent that the OP is intended to have a political message, is surely the political message of the OP.
So there are two components to the hoax question:
-was the item sent on the listserv
-was it intended seriously
Seems increasingly likely that it was, in fact, sent out.
The point isn't "morons are running the hedge funds". No one believes that. The point is "morons have access to wealth, and an ability to generate even greater wealth, because of our the deep inequalities in our society. We're not a meritocracy and people with money don't necessarily--or even likely--deserve it." Which, yes, eveyone knows that, too, but personal narratives do more for most people to convey this truth than do abstract statistics. So they're important.
-was it intended seriously
If you mean "was he intending to seriously start a new hedge fund or was he just sort of joking about it, and thereby evidencing what a misogynistic and entitled prick he is?", this is not relevant to the question of whether the author deserves to have more money than 99.999% of the people now reading his email will ever have.
I suppose if he really intended the email as satire--and so he truly meant it to be mocking people who spoke or behaved like that--that would be somewhat exculpatory.
Huh. I thought that the OP was a critique of hedge funds, that morons like these shouldn't be intermediaries between savings and businesses. It's carefully written and fairly funny, if the sender is this kid, I don't think he likes himself much, neither do I think that he sees this as a useful line of work.
What people do with their own money is a tougher question.
"Slampieces" sounds like it should describe expensive watches. Or maybe cheap watches that look expensive.
"morons are running the hedge funds"
Actually, I do believe this-- not morons like this guy, but people who are extremely short-sighted and very close to used-car salesman.
The rest of 56-- kind of, but I do not see inherited wealth as the primary problem, rather the trouble is the size and political influence of finance. Inheriting a farm or a share of a non-financial business doesn't bug me much.
60: But farms only get so big. What about in the case of a huge (mostly) non-financial business, like with the Waltons?
Actually, I do believe this-- not morons like this guy, but people who are extremely short-sighted and very close to used-car salesman.
In one of DeLong's posts about Summers somebody linked to this description of working at a hedge fund.
Most of the quants at D.E. Shaw were immigrant men. In fact I was the only woman quant when I joined, and there were quite a few quants, maybe 50, and I was also one of the only Americans. What nearly all these men had in common was a kind of constant, nervous hunger, almost like a daily fear that they wouldn't have enough to eat. At first I thought of them as having a serious chip on their shoulder, like they were the kind of guy that didn't make the football team in high school and were still trying to get over that. And I still think there's an element of something as simple as that, but it goes deeper. One of my colleagues from Eastern Europe said to me once, "Cathy, my grandparents were coal miners. I don't want my kids to be coal miners. I don't want my grandchildren to be coal miners. I don't want anybody in my family to ever be a coal miner again." So, what, you're going to amass enough money so that no descendent of yours ever needs to get a job? Something like that.
But here's the thing, that fear was real to him. It was that earnest, heartfelt anxiety that convinced me that I was really different from these guys. The difference was that, firstly, they were acting as if a famine was imminent, and they'd need to scrounge up food or starve to death, and secondly, that only their nuclear family was worth saving. This is where I really lost them. I mean, I get the idea of acts of desperation to survive, but I don't get how you choose who to save and who to let die. However, it was this kind of us-against-them mentality that prevailed and informed the approach to making money.
Once you understand the mentality, it's easier to understand the "dumb money" phrase. . . .
Yes, I took 58 to be the point as well. Everyone knows that kids of rich people can be idiots, I thought the point was that this was a window not just into rich kid buffoons but also insight into how hedge funds work -- it's certainly the former but not meaningfully the latter. Anyhow, rich idiots who seem likely to lose their inheritance are less dangerous than rich non-idiots who secure it for generations.
There's all sorts of people around here whose grandfathers were coal miners. None of them fucked up the whole economy looking to make it so their kids could do something else for a living.
60. It would be nice if they didn't bribe the Mexican government and use illegal tactics in the US to fight union organising.
I don't have a detailed theory of how much regulation is right everywhere. There are real problems with failures of deomcracy and powerful monopoly businesses in the US. It's a little bit of a vicious circle, but it's not solely corruption caused by capital. It's not big business that wants immigrants and muslims mistreated.
The OP, which I guess is written by a rich kid who sees both himself and the efforts of people around him as useless, IMO directs attention away from real problems.
62 is very interesting, and it rings true - the commonest cultural failing in finance is simply the idea that only you and your immediate circle matter and that everyone else is just a sheep to be sheared. Combination of psychosis and short time horizon.
There's all sorts of people around here whose grandfathers were coal miners. None of them fucked up the whole economy looking to make it so their kids could do something else for a living.
This is true. My own ancestors were miners and farmers, and they went to a lot of trouble to make sure that none of us had to be miners or farmers, but the route they picked was through things like medicine and law and government service. But then again, I suppose that some of their contemporaries ended up doing things like selling opium and dealing in slaves, for the same reasons (William Jardine came from a very similar background to great-great-grandfather).
62: I once attended a talk by one of the top guys at Carlyle, and he specifically mentioned how they go out of their way not to hire people coming from money, who they view as insufficiently motivated. They want people who are "very greedy" (his phrase, which he meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek) but who don't currently have any money. Those are the people who they've found are really "hungry" (again, his word), and willing to do whatever it takes to make money.
"morons are running the hedge funds"
Actually, I do believe this-- not morons like this guy, but people who are extremely short-sighted and very close to used-car salesman.
I believe it to. In fact, many are morons who are quite like this guy--the documentation for misogyny on Wall Street is extensive.
More generally, though, I just don't believe that Wall Street rewards intelligence any more than Vegas does. For the most part, people who get rich on Wall Street get lucky. A lot of the quants and Nobel Prize winners are just for show, or their cleverness is used to create schemes that are complicated enough that outsiders can't figure out that they are scams.
If 51 is right, we have a kid desperately trying to impress his friends by pretending to be like his Dad, without the foggiest idea of what his Dad actually does.
62 was interesting, and rang true for me, though I only have experience from a distance and in litigation.
By "willing to do whatever it takes to make money", I think what he meant was "work nights and weekends for years while sacrificing all personal commitments", not "cheat and steal". But I'm sure cheating and stealing would be okay too as long as it was technically legal (or probably legal).
To be clear, I'm confident that there are hedge funds run by morons. But not most of them, and generally not the successful ones.
I just don't believe that Wall Street rewards intelligence any more than Vegas does.
You don't believe Vegas rewards skill?
69 For the most part, people who get rich on Wall Street get lucky. A lot of the quants and Nobel Prize winners are just for show, or their cleverness is used to create schemes that are complicated enough that outsiders can't figure out that they are scams.
On the other hand, I know a lot of people who know Jim Simons and are thoroughly convinced that he's successful because he's so smart he figured out how to outmaneuver everyone else on Wall Street. I have no opinion of my own about this.
A hedge fund is just a private pool of capital where the manager has some access to other peoples' money. I think originally 'hedge fund' was just a catch-all for all the funds who didn't fit any definition that would put actual legal/registration requirements on their managers. Post-Dodd Frank there are a few more registration requirements for hedge funds but it's still not a category that picks out a particular type of entity with much specificity. So it's hard to generalize about 'hedge funds'.
A hedge fund is just a private pool of capital where the manager has some access to other peoples' money.
Typically an open-ended fund of indefinite duration, in contrast to private equity/"buyout" funds, which are typically closed funds with a fixed lifespan.
I just don't believe that Wall Street rewards intelligence any more than Vegas does.
Vegas rewards intelligence. It isn't easy to run a successful casino.
By "willing to do whatever it takes to make money", I think what he meant was "work nights and weekends for years while sacrificing all personal commitments", not "cheat and steal".
That's a blurred line - look at SAC, which talked a lot about "trading edge", which, it now looks like, meant "insider dealing". Anything that gives you that edge is good, is the attitude.
My impression, mostly gathered from the grudging respect of people working at other hedge funds, is that renaissance technologies genuinely is in its own league.
Motherfucker, how many computers do I post from?
I think originally 'hedge fund' was just a catch-all for all the funds who didn't fit any definition that would put actual legal/registration requirements on their managers.
IIRC the original hedge funds were called that because they actually did hedge their bets, as opposed to other sorts of fund. A normal fund might think "I like Houghton Mifflin, they're well run, I'll buy some shares in them." But the risk is that, even if HM is the best run office supply firm in the world, if there's a major downturn in the economy, then shares in every office supply firm will fall. And you'll lose money even though you were absolutely right about HM's awesomeness.
Hedge funds would buy into HM (also called going long on it) and at the same time go short on (sell (borrowed) shares in) office supply firms in general - essentially they were betting not that HM would go up or down, but that it would generally do better than its peers. This is called a long-short strategy for obvious reasons.
Now there are all sorts of strategies, but they're still called hedge funds as a hangover from the days when they were all pretty much long-short funds.
Houghton Mifflin...office supply firm
Dunder?
Yeah, I was confusing the real Houghton Mifflin, which sells textbooks, with the fictional Dunder Mifflin, which sells office supplies.
At my school, the joke was that SAE stood for "same assholes everywhere."
I must say that www.dundermifflin.com is quite well done.
Slampiece Broprize would be an excellentawful name for an Unfogged commenter.
RWM's old workplace bought a bunch of Dunder-Mifflin paper for their office unaware that it was a joke.
It seems to be there is an actual Dunder Mifflin line of products sold at Staples.
Guys? Um, how do you know if you're a slampiece? Should I ask my doctor? Will my department chair tell me, if I ask for a one-on-one? I'm kinda worried.
Update! While the email was indeed sent from the account of the banker bro in question, according to a member of the fraternity, the bro himself did not write it. From our inbox:
I write to you suggesting that you edit the article to include at least the notion that the email was a parody, because I know that it is. I am currently in the fraternity that that person was in, and that email is something we call a "sting" -- an email from someone else's email account that blasts them for their flaws, ridiculous actions, embarrassing moments. The guy who supposedly sent the email was a common target of stings, being a bit of a pompous ass from time to time. Since we all care much more about what a person has done rather than what their father did, that attitude was pretty unpopular in the house and he often got stings mocking him for it.
...the guy that got "stung" [...] had absolutely no hand in writing it and wouldn't be ridiculous enough to send that out to our list. Even though the sting has some basis in his actions and words, he's not nearly the person the email portrays him as being.
So it was just 'icing a bro' all along.
Guys? Um, how do you know if you're a slampiece?
The bros will issue you a tank top and a jersey.
I dunno if I buy it. Fraternities are very efficient at covering up embarrassing public relations stuff. It was a joke, we're all very clever except this one guy we don't like, it's satire, someone hacked someone's account. Maybe it was a prank and maybe not, but every time some leak happens, it turns out it's always a joke, clever satire, hacked account stuff?
And I almost forgot: the most important part of the uniform.
This Dunder Mifflin site has a few interesting items fleshed out. For instance, This is Ryan Howard's photo blog.
Artist Statement: They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but my photographs strive for more. I document life--capturing emotions and provoking thought. My pictures serve as a mirror, not only reflecting the truth in existence, but also providing the viewer a glimpse back through my lens, past the viewfinder, and straight into my spirit/soul.
I now want to make a tank top with "Slam ☮." on it.
94 -- because that's more plausible than this being a joke.
It was a joke, we're all very clever except this one guy we don't like, it's satire, someone hacked someone's account. Maybe it was a prank and maybe not, but every time some leak happens, it turns out it's always a joke, clever satire, hacked account stuff?
Every time some leak happens? Such as this and... ?
100: Why do you think Bezos (a Bilderberg Group member) bought the Post? They're systematically keeping Americans ignorant of the truth! Also, because Lizard People.
If the slampiece-pulling hedge-fund-starting fraternity bro did not exist, it would be necessary for Jezebel to invent him.
This is the bro version of the Nigerian scam email right?
Somewhere in the archives for some reason I wrote a fake Nigerian scam email related to embezzling fraternity funds. Can't find it now, nor do I remember the specific context. But I recall that I had fun doing it!
Based on my vague recall of the big investigative piece about Harvard-Russia back in 2006 or so, people at high levels in financial firms don't use complete sentences much in email. Given how many times I've heard about the importance of writing well in email when on the job market or early in one's career, I figure not having to worry about that is one of the symbols of power.
OMG my CEO is barely coherent in e-mails. Drives me nuts.
My senior colleague/sometime collaborator is so incoerhtn u bear lee undstandr th mssageehhhh WHY DONT U ANSWER MY QSTTTINN I WRIORT U YESTRDAY THIS S NO WY TO TREET UR COLARBTOR
Definitely the first thing I'll do if I ever hit it big is stop correcting all my typos.
These emails weren't like that. Perhaps because they were high-level-to-high-level.
106: the chancellor of my university cannot string together more than a single complete sentences when she speaks. After one sentence -- which typically isn't exactly coherent -- she routinely utters a standalone noun: "Excellence!" "Sustainability!" "Accountability!" For a few years, I excused her because English is her second language. But she's been in this country for a very long time, and I'm increasingly convinced that she sees her exclamations as likely to build morale among the troops. Either that, or she has some kind of corporate Tourettes.
After one sentence -- which typically isn't exactly coherent -- she routinely utters a standalone noun: "Excellence!" "Sustainability!" "Accountability!"
Ah, Tony Blair was famous for speaking in. Sentences. With no. Verbs.
re: 112
Yeah, it was one of things, along with the odd pointing-with-the-thumb body language that seems to have been generally inherited by Cameron et al, as well. Cameron also has his odd* use of 'grip', too. As in 'we have to grip this problem'
* infuriating, emblematic of what a shuddering giant wank of a man he is.
91: so Jezebel now falls into the same category as all those painfully earnest and humourless right-wingers who think Onion articles are real and send each other the "I'm Totally Psyched About This Abortion!" column with lots of tut-tutting appended.
I just spoke with a recent sorority member in the University in question. Embarrassingly, I couldn't remember the term "slampiece" and for some totally bizarre and inexplicable reason remembered it as "slambeignet" to the amusement of all.
Anyhow, according to her "slampiece" is a mostly sexist but sometimes gender-neutral term, that basically means "hookup partner" -- it's a one night stand or someone you're not dating, sometimes used by the sisters to refer to the bros, not just a generalized word for women.
SLAMBEIGNET?!?!?!? I need to change my pseud.
115.2: Wait, I thought that was how it was being used anyway.
Slambeignet was a Napoleonic term.
I thought "slampiece" was some insanely sexist stand-in for "chick," which apparently isn't quite right.
Anyhow, I think "Slambeignet" was both an aide-de-camp at Austerlitz and a pet name for Talleyrand's penis.
118: it's pretty easy to tie those two thoughts together--it comes across in the letter as an insanely sexist stand-in for "chick" because the author of the letter (which, hoax, so) views all women as nothing more than potential hookup partners.
Wait, that IS what it means. All we learned from Halford's source is that frat women may also use it to refer to their own potential hookup partners.
How the hell did you get to "slambeignet"? Your brain is awesome.
Joining the chorus of love for "slambeignet".
Schlumberger is the only word I can think of that's subliminally close enough, but who knows?
Slambeignet? Halford, I hate to be the one who says this to you. But you know what they make beignets out of?
Regular beignets, sure. But slambeignets are pure crocodile.
Work-anxiety related insomnia. If I'm going to be half-awake unproductively obsessing about things, I might as well be commenting.
Good thinking. And good luck with the work stuff.
Also, if the mouseover text weren't still shiny and new, I'd be seriously considering 125.
Aw, thanks. The current one's much better, though.
Anyhow, I think "Slambeignet" was both an aide-de-camp at Austerlitz and a pet name for Talleyrand's penis.
Qui n'a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le plaisir de vivre.
Dames....
