Forbes – In an op-ed in the Financial Times on Monday , I described the unraveling and demise of the shadow banking system that started with non-bank mortgage lenders, structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and conduits, major independent monoline broker dealers and money market funds. I then argued that the next leg of this unraveling would be hedge funds and private equity firms and their reckless leveraged buyouts (LBOs).
Let me now discuss in more detail this unraveling of parts of the hedge fund industry.
First, note that too much of the shadow banking system was about "Schmalpha" rather than "Alpha" (i.e. the returns that fund managers and asset managers–with their ridiculously high management fees of 2% or more–were getting by parting investors from a good chunk of their assets, rather than by superior absolute returns). In fact, the hedge-fund math of "2/20" was, most of the time, 2% for the fund managers and not 20% (sometimes single digit returns and, this year, actual negative ones) for investors. This scam is now unraveling.
