NYU Loses $24 Million Due to Bad Investments - Where’s the Oversight?
Dec 27th, 2008 by Take Back NYU!
Well, what do you know? NYU has just lost $24 million dollars in investments managed by Bernard Madoff, the infamous former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market who was recently arrested for racking up $50 billion in fraudulent hedge fund losses. J. Ezra Merkin, the investment chair of NYU’s Board of Trustees, has resigned and is currently being sued by the administration.
What is most infuriating about all this is that it could - and should have - been caught a decade ago, when number crunchers analyzed Madoff’s returns and saw that something was amiss. So what allowed Madoff to squander and embezzle up to $50 billion? LACK OF TRANSPARENCY. Investors simply had no financial oversight. They had no idea how their money was being spent, and put their faith blindly in a charismatic fellow who probably gave free hugs.
We the students invest $50,000 a year in NYU, and, like Madoff, our university has squandered a massive sum that should be funding our education. This is an outrage. As students it is not only our right but our duty to oversee our university’s investments, a feat they are clearly incapable of doing themselves. Don’t let us continue to be duped like the Madoff investors! We need budget and endowment disclosure NOW!
Wow, really? It seems incredible that our wise and noble leaders could have made such a seemingly foolish mistake! Who could have seen this coming? Who’d have thunk?
More power to the protesters and supporters of Take Back NYU!! If NOT the students, who will stand up and “take back”? And they can begin by TAKING BACK the money that was squandered by Ezra Merkin……come on, Ezra, there are people that have to take out loans and pay for them far into the future…..and he thought it was ok to speculate with students’ futures! As a child of the 60’s I know about protests and what it can accomplish with solidarity and true determination…sometime sheer determination. Don’t give up without getting what you are protesting for!!!!!
Morons. If everyone else in the world was fooled by Madoff, including our own government, what makes you think you would be able to have done a damn thing. Ugh, you make me sick.