Why is Pimco boss Bill Gross, manager of trillion dollars in assets Pimco Funds, under fire from the Wall Street Journal? The WSJ published a report today which examines in great detail how Bill Gross lost over $3billion on Lehman Brothers bonds going bankrupt in September 2008 tripping off the Financial meltdown which the US is still trying to get out of. There are two more WSJ reports that are not complimentary to Bill Gross financial acumen:
June 7th, 2011 -Bill Gross’ 3-Month, YTD Returns Lagging, Too
June 7th, 2011 – Gross’ Call: Early, or Plain Wrong on Treasury Debt?
Is this the WSJ just exercising its fiduciary trust duties with readers and subscribers?
Or is this just a news item worthy of note while doing daily due diligence?
Or is this series of reports being triggered by Bill Gross’ remarks on Wall Street?
Money would also become the economic and political wedge for profound changes in American society. Fifty years ago, the highest paid and most prestigious professions were that of a doctor or a 707 airline pilot who flew the “golden” route from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Today the yellow brick road begins on Wall Street or the City. Aside from supernova innovators such as Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, the money is made from securitizing things instead of booting and rebuilding America. The tallest buildings in almost every major city are banks, with tens of thousands of people shuffling and trading paper for a living. One of this country’s premier investment banks paid each of its 26,000 employees an average of $370,000 in 2010, nearly ten times the take-home pay of other American workers. Almost a quarter of the 400 wealthiest people on Forbes annual richest list make their money from money, whereas only 8% could make that claim in its first issue in 1982, and probably close to 0% when I first read my economic primer in 1966.
Having been part of this process and even a member of the rogue’s gallery itself, I know one thing for sure: This is not God’s work – it has the unmistakable odor of Mammon. PIMCO, while Mammonesque, is a company to be proud of. I can say with confidence that there are very few clients who have not benefited from our investment management over the years. Some of the rest of this industry, however, I’m not so sure of: rating agencies that perpetually fail at commonsensical quality judgments, bankers that make loans to subterranean credits and then extend the beggar’s bowl for themselves, and 80% of active money managers that underperform the market. As a profession we have failed miserably at our primary function – the efficient and productive allocation of capital: The S&L debacle of the early 1980s, the Asian crisis, LTCM, dotcoms, subprimes, Lehman and the resurrection, instead of the reformation, of Wall Street, are major sins of the modern era of money. Hang your heads, moneychangers. And no, it is not yet time to move on, as many banking CEOs suggest. How can bond traders make ten, one hundred, one thousand times more money than an engineer or social worker given their dismal historical performance? Why is it that some of today’s doctors are using food stamps while investment banking executives complain about millions of dollars in compensation that might be deferred in case of a future bailout?
Financiers have lost their high ground and, if truth be told, we began to lose it a long time ago when we figured out that money was more than a medium of exchange or a poor substitute for a store of value. We figured out a turbocharged way to make money with money and proclaimed ourselves geniuses in the process.
Read complete posting at: http://advisoranalyst.com/glablog/2011/02/02/bill-gross-investment-outlook-february-2011-devils-bargain/#ixzz1Ohm0DmgY
Or is this NYTimes Dealbook envy by the WSJ as suggested here.
Or is this the WSJ taking on fellow News Corp outlet, Fox News, MMA -like fighting instincts?
Only the Shadow and these people know: Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com, Mary Pilon at mary.pilon@wsj.com and Tom McGinty at tom.mcginty@wsj.com. A Fifth of the good stiff…uhhh, stuff to whomever comes up with the best theory.