Loading ...Criticizing philanthropy doesn’t play well, but . . .
There are not many more worthless things you can do with $20 million than to give it to a college or university. Bill Gross gave $20 million, a huge sum of money, likely multiples of the total gross income I’ll make in my lifetime, to Duke University.
But, you know what? Duke University now has an endowment of over $6 Billion. That’s right. Bill Gross had $20 million to give away as a philanthropic gesture, and he gave it to an entity that essentially has 300 times that much dough sitting in the bank. Is there anything they could do after that, after he increased their holdings 0.3% that they couldn’t have done the day before?
What could St. Jude’s Hospital do with that? What could the Salvation Army do with that? What could he have done investing that as venture capital in some company or companies involved in manufacturing, not twee little phone apps but actual manufacturing of some sort that might employ blue collar men and women?
But, no, he didn’t do any of these things. He contributed a rounding error to an entity that, simply by the fact that it has amassed $6 billion of endowment, we can reasonably surmise has no fvcking clue how, or no intention, to deploy its resources to help students, families, the community or scholarship. Congratulations, Bill, feel GOOD about yourself! You took a huge something and almost assuredly made nothing out of it. What a grand person you must be!
Sorry for the rant.
And, I completely agree, AM that the timing of the departures of Gross and El erian do fit rather neatly with the thesis that the worldwide bond bubble is floating toward a landscape full of cacti.