And it's a fairly safe bet he won't be booking passage to Argentina anytime soon. Or for that matter the Republic of the Congo or Peru.
Singer, using his middle name, is the founder of the now $24 billion Elliott Management. His recent protracted fight with default-loving Argentina over some so-called sovereign bonds put him centerfold in the hedge fund world of late. It wasn't his first financial rodeo and if if he lives long enough it most likely won't be his last.
It's a long, twisted and complicated story that has nothing to do with the good people of Argentina and everything to do with staggeringly incompetent leadership, the kind most Americans are becoming more and more familiar with as the days dwindle down to November.
Here are some quotes from the nearly 70-year old fund manager we not only like but fully endorse.
"Resentment is not morally superior to making money," he said during the Occupy Wall Street charade.
On the Federal Reserve he wrote it was run by "a group of inbred academics." who have "lost any semblance, any wispy remnant of humility."
On the U.S. and Europe he noted both are 'headed for mass poverty and degradation of freedom." That's an argument Singer won't get much push back on today in many quarters.
In the 1930s FDR confiscated gold. And over the years via various and often nefarious ruses like eminent domain rules government has confiscated lots of properties. Singer noted "It's not out of the realm of possibility" today either.
It's not just so-called Third World banana republics, though some believe that's the real next stop on America's future ride once the Piper gets fully paid for all the incompetent leadership and bureaucratic nonsense fostered by academics trying to swim in waters way over their heads.
To borrow a couple of words made famous more than 40-years ago and remain so today by the late writer William Manchester, these are the "nattering nabobs" of academe. Trust them at you're own peril. When they finally grow up, if they ever do, most hope to find real jobs.
Earlier this year he wrote that society itself might be undermined by a nation "disdaining the rule of law and paying whatever it wants to pay." If that reminds anyone of Argentina's recent attempted scam, someone say, Hello!
To be sure, the Singer haters periodically come out in force, most of them academics. Much of Singer's apparent ideas because they center on individual responsibility and economic choice grate against the equal outcomes crowd.
You recognize these folks. They either teach, become bureaucrats or run for public office.
That's our view. We hope you know yours.
t. man hatter
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