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9 Comments on this article:

Report as: spam offensive Marvin L Foushee on 2/01/08 at 5am

Most universities and colleges pay out at least 4.5% of their endowment each year. With universities earning 15-30 percent returns on their endownments each year and paying Wall Street wizards millions to play the financial markets for them as investment managers, I don't see why Congress doesn't make these endowment funds tax exempt--if, and only if, they pay out at least 50 percent of their endowment returns back into their educational community. Investing in golf courses and 500 dollar a night hotels does have its perks, but what do they say about a university's mission statement?

Report as: spam offensive Albert Franklin on 2/01/08 at 11am

Who has ever investigated the legal acitons of congress? What bill has congress paid, since the murder of Lincoln? With both Japan and Germay paying off World Wars I & ll, did congress pay down on the national debt even once? If they did, then why do they owe some "$81 Trillion? Now, with international bankesrs, nazis and the Ku Klux Klan barking for the Federal Reserve to cough up billions because
they choose to bilk American in a credit and housing market scams, so as to foist the Amero on an unsuspecting public?

Report as: spam offensive Guy Incognito on 2/01/08 at 5pm

Man, Albert has really worked hard to overtake Marvin as the head crazy as of late.

Report as: spam offensive RE: Guy on 2/02/08 at 6am

And actually, Marvin has worked hard to make sense. Like the comment above, which before would read like a mashup of CosmoGirl and the Bizarro-Economist, but now reads like a well reasoned response that could spark some good debate. Yay for Marvin not being crazy anymore.

Report as: spam offensive Marvin L Foushee on 2/02/08 at 2pm

Stanford could give a 50,000 dollar grant (a free university education) to all of its undergraduates for the year 2008, and this use of the endownment fund in this manner would only subtract 334.45 million from the 3.08 billion increase in it's endownment fund for the year 2007, a reduction of 11 percent.

The goal of a non-profit charity or tax exempt fund is to maximize the payout of the fund, under the restraint of sound financial strategy and policy, for the reasons that the fund was set up.

The business model of maximizing the wealth of the fund does not apply when the fund reaches a certain point in size, nor does it apply when the mission statement behind the fund is to serve the interests of higher education.

This 21.9 percent increase in Stanford's endownment fund for the year 2007 came after the 5.0 percent payout, after management fees, after net gains, after net losses.

Brother, can you spare a %50,000 dime?





Report as: spam offensive Marvin L Foushee on 2/02/08 at 4pm

<center>
Visit the <a href="http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/"><b>U.S. National Debt Clock</b></a><p>
</center>

Report as: spam offensive Seriously? on 2/02/08 at 10pm

So...why is the chart w/ this story hand-drawn?
Also...why don't the bars match the axis or bar totals?
...'guess the 'artist' can rule out being a consultant?

Report as: spam offensive Marvin L Foushee on 2/03/08 at 7am

Nice point, "Seriously." Also, the artist completely left out MIT in the chart, which had an endownment fund of 9.9 billion dollars at the end of the year 2007, an amount quite a bit larger than the 7.1 billion dollar endownment fund for Columbia.

[If the figures don't work for the political chart, make the chart work for the figures.]







Report as: spam offensive Marvin L Foushee on 2/03/08 at 3pm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113477717881125159.html?mod=home_we_banner_mid

Nice Wall Street Journal (2005) article on the spending (or lack of spending) of university endownment funds in the United States.




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