- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Harvard's Foundation Might Be a Good Candidate For A Bailout
I read that Harvard University's Foundation lost at least eight billion dollars of its value in the four month period since June. This leaves it with only about $29 billion.
At this rate, they will be broke by this time next year.
We can't have the number one university foundation go down in fiscal flames. They're bigger than all but six other university foundations combined. If they go, they're liable to take the rest of the university foundations with them.
We can't have that.
I'm afraid another bailout may be necessary.
The Harvard Foundation does seem to fit the apparently rigorous qualifications for the bailout.
First and foremost, it helps to be friendly with U.S. Secretary of the Treasurer Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
He worked on Wall Street as an investment banker and many of the companies who have been already given bailouts have a large presence there. I don't think any of those firms even bothered to show up to get the billions they got. Maybe Paulson just did a direct deposit into their accounts and sent each of them a text.
"Check the ATM for some Xmas cheer. XOXO. BFF, Hank"
I could be wrong, but I'd say those guys from Detroit probably didn't know the Secretary of the Treasurer. Sure they finally got some billions, but not without having to grovel before Congress.
Paulson's MBA is from Harvard so he presumably already has a relationship with its Foundation.
The only other apparent requirement for much of this bailout money is that you are either a bank or a bank-holding company.
As I wrote about in a previous blog, I've started my own bank - Bank of Brad or BOB for short - to give me a shot at getting my own personal shovel full of cash. I figure that the odds are better than playing the lottery.
While Harvard is not a bank in the normal sense of the word, it could be easily argued that they're an internationally renowned bank of intelligence or a knowledge-holding company, if you will.
Personally, I think that's justification enough for a piece of the bailout pie.
Anyhow, the overall amount of money that is being thrown around during this crisis is almost impossible to grasp from a local perspective. I'm not even going to attempt to illustrate whatever the total of the overall bailout bucket is up to. I know it started out as $700 billion, but it's grown significantly since then.
To be honest, I kind of lost count. Just like our elected officials.
But the Harvard Foundation's eight billion dollar loss is a little easier to compare to actual local projects that we can all see and touch and aren't just transient values assigned to pieces of paper.
Eight billion dollars is equivalent to 80 Bill Emerson Memorial Bridges.
You could build 129 Rush Hudson Limbaugh Sr. Federal Courthouses for that much money or 125 if you didn't want the roof to leak.
It would pay for 157 River Campus projects that if laid side to side would give you a great view of the Mississippi for about 29 miles.
If the Cape County Commission had eight billion dollars they could chip-and-seal 111,104 miles of gravel roads.
Striping and notarization of any wayward easements would be extra, of course.
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