Gooney

Golden

Jimmy Piersall said that he was the “gooney bird that walked to the bank.” Andrew Golden is another. He walks to the bank with the highest compensation package of any person on Princeton’s payroll—more than $2,500,000 for the year in which the endowment was eviscerated. [fn] And he says things like: “We recognized there would be extreme environments. So we stayed the course...We looked at everything and felt good about what we had been doing.” When did he “recognize” the “extreme environment?” As it charged the mound with a bat in its hands? Or when he woke in the hospital? Did he “feel [so] good” about losing 23.5% of the endowment’s value in one year that he decided to “stay the course?” No, he stayed the course because he had no choice—the endowment is predominantly comprised of illiquid holdings for which there is no market. One could more readily change the course of a rudderless oil tanker. Is anyone actually listening to this gooney bird? And paying him?

[fn] Go to pages 50 and 51 of Princeton’s IRS Form 990 for the 2008-09 tax year, and ask yourself this simple question: “Is this a charity?”

Lefty

Gomez

In my previous post I spoke of “prospects”, referring to some ideas that had occurred to me. I should have known better. Ideas don’t occur to me anymore. The tuition elimination scheme that I suggested seems already to have been adopted elsewhere—e.g., Berea College and Cooper Union.

“I’d rather be lucky than good.”

Or, I’d rather be right than original.