Steal $100 they call you a thief, steal a billion and they call you a genius!
He didn’t steal anything. He made smart bet. He’s who many banks lost that bet to.
Do what you like with your money JP. I just hope you were not hoping this would help you with you villainous rep…
Hey Harvard, why not stop taking transfers, and use the money to defer some kids who go work in poor countries for a year or 2? Or feed some people. Or anything…it just keeps growing.
He bet on a (bad) loan portfolio that he packaged up to sell to IBK via Goldman Sachs. That’s stealing in my book.
Paulson’s kid must have really bad grades.
They knew what they were buying. It’s all a dirty business, but the buyers can’t cry ignorance. They were sophisticated enough to join the poker game. I don’t feel sorry for (or envy) any of them…
^ Well, the SEC considered it fraud and fined Goldman.
Also, how did the rating agencies rate those assets? As we learned in so many cases, they often gave AAA ratings to junk.
I know, but they buyer knew they were buying “high yield”. It comes with high risk. And everyone has been fined over this…too bad nothing was done BEFORE they blew uo the world, right?
The money is his, legally, whether you like it or not (and most likely not, since most people easily find reasons to dislike the rich). He could make the donation to Harvard, or he could just keep it. If he donates to Harvard and they expand SEAS, the benefits to the world are huge. Things get built, knowledge is discovered, jobs are created, taxes are raised. Or he could just keep it. What do you think?
The point is he could have donated it to more needy schools. Harvard is rich enough to build an excellent SEAS if it so chooses.
Sure, he could have given it to a school with a lower-caliber student body. The bang for the buck would likely have been less, though.
^ Sure, because we all know Harvard’s the best and all the best engineering students and faculty are at Harvard? Actually, there are many public and private engineering schools that are better than Harvard SEAS, which could have benefited from Paulson’s ill-gotten gains.
But it is Harvard that he wishes to build up. Thus, the donation is to Harvard.
@zapfino, I think the point of the donation is to bring Harvard engineering up to snuff with the rest of the university’s regular degree-granting programs. Engineering may not be its strong point now, but it will be soon, thanks in part to Paulson’s gift.
I give only to schools that I attended. I see no reason why Paulson wouldn’t do the same. Thus there is a very small pool of schools that he would donate to.
^ @HappyAlumnus I understand that.
My post was directed at the unwarranted assumption that the “bang for the buck would likely have been less” had the donation been made to schools “with a lower-caliber student body.”
Don’t conflate prestige worshipping with IQ.
I’d be willing to bet that Harvard’s undergraduate student body does okay in the IQ department, too.
Perception doesn’t equal reality. Thanks to Harvard we’ve had 2 disastrous presidencies in the last 15 years, a wall street led great recession for not just the US but the world over with the likes of John Paulson, and billions of tax dollars wasted in bailouts by other Harvard grads.
Those who chase prestige will always chase glory and money, it’s never enough.
Harvard doesn’t produce the world’s smartest, it only produces those who think they are the world’s smartest, which has led to disastrous consequences for the country.
If Harvard drops off the face of the earth tomorrow, the country will be better off, not worse.
What’s the alternative? Let Yale run everything?
…and take the rest of the Ivies with it. All these schools produce are a bunch of pretentious hypocritical pseudo-intellectuals and money/power hungry prestige ho’s. Their graduates are running the country to the ground.
I bet you’re fun at parties.
Way more fun than a bunch of pompous arses. 