Ben Stein Hacks at Hedgies

Ben Stein fires some zingers in his Sunday New York Times column. A sampling:

Hedge funds are largely a fraud.

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The model hedge fund is not a means to outperform the market. It is a means to outcharge the investor.

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For anyone at all familiar with rich people, the idea that to be rich is to be sophisticated is almost laughable. Rich people become rich generally in ways that have zero to do with sophistication in investing. I have seen this in spades this week with all of the shrieking from my rich pals about their investment losses.

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The junk bonds that Drexel Burnham Lambert once ginned up were supposed to be loans to less-qualified borrowers that would pay higher rates of interest, but not be subject to default rates that offset those gains. They weren’t . . . . Subprime was supposed to be, in effect, a Milken junk bond . . . .