The story of Andrew Lahde and thoughts on the meritocracy myth,

[editec]

Sometimes the sham of our meritocracy works on one's behalf, sometimes not.

Some of you might find the tale of Andrew Lahde amusing.

Some of you no doubt will find it annoying.

The story of Andrew Lahde is also telling. As founder and manager of a small California hedge fund he came into the spotlight in 2007, after his one-year-old fund returned 866% betting against the subprime collapse. In 2008 he closed his fund and wrote a"goodbye" letter to his investors. Some excerpts:

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I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades.
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I now have time to repair my health, which was destroyed by the stress I layered onto myself over the past two years, as well as my entire life -- where I had to compete for spaces in universities and graduate schools, jobs and assets under management -- with those who had all the advantages (rich parents) that I did not. May meritocracy be part of a new form of government, which needs to be established.
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First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have reigned in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it.
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source​

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For those who might find the blog source of this post dubious, I include a source that the financial community relies on to confirm the blog's story.
Bloomberg​

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[Truthmatters]

great story