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panhandle_pony wrote:I heard a rumor today that Orsini is trying to get Yeshiva U. (#52 academically) on our football schedule for 2011 under the premise that a victory would help our recruiting efforts in the northeast; and, a victory might push us a little closer to their #52 academic rating. I like this philosophy, but is it true ? What is their mascot ?

Yeshiva was Greedy.

So were - and are - a lot of other institutions and people. But Yeshiva is a non-profit, religious university. It has behaved abominably.

Maddoff somehow managed to convince a slew of banks and hedge funds, billionaires such as Mets owner Fred Wilpon, Yeshiva University along with charities associated with Steven Spielberg and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel that the laws of investing do not apply to them. The odds of anyone getting double-digit returns year after year are laughably small. They, of course, understood that, but figured why fix something that ain’t broke. By turning a blind eye to fiscal reality, these victims showed almost as much greed as Madoff.

Its president has finally issued a statement. Scroll down to the next post, and then look at the comment thread to read it. (UD heartily thanks anon for sending it.)

At some point in this letter, the president should ask forgiveness. He should ask the Yeshiva community to forgive him and his fellow administrators for having included on the board of trustees and in the business school at least two people of low moral character (Madoff and Merkin may not be the end of the story). He should ask forgiveness for having allowed rank conflicts of interest among at least five of the trustees. Lots of people on that board seem to have been in one another’s pockets:

According to research of 990 forms conducted by a fund raiser I know, at least four members of Y.U.’s board had significant charitable dollars invested with Madoff, either directly or through J. Ezra Merkin’s Ascot Partners, a hedge fund which lost all of its $1.8 billion in assets after puttting them in Madoff’s hands:

* Ludwig Bravmann’s foundation had $5 million of its $20 million invested with Ascot as of June 2007.

* Warren Eisenberg’s foundation had $5 million of its $100 million invested with Madoff as of June 2007.

* Emanuel Gruss’s foundation had an unknown portion of its $33 million invested with Ascot as of March 2007.

* Joshua Muss’ foundation had $2 million of its $23 million invested with Madoff as of October 2007.

* Elie Wiesel’s Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity apparently had all of its $40 million invested with Madoff.

This does seem to have been enough to prod the president to write that we will "examine our existing conflicts policies."

But as to expressions of shame for making your board of trustees look like a den of thieves - feh. Here’s what the president says:

"We will learn all appropriate lessons from this experience."

Could you plotz? We will certainly get those lessons learned! Don’t you worry! I mean, the appropriate ones, of course…

Appropriate. Really. Gag me. What’s the appropriate lesson to be learned from making the global financial criminal of the century the treasurer of your trustees?

Gee. I’m not sure. It’s, you know, kind of unprecedented. There may be no lesson quite appropriate to this degree of bad conduct.

Instead of announcing with smug certainty that lessons will get learned, the president should have said that he was sorry. And ashamed.

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jtstang wrote:You'd have to fly to Singapore, but you could road trip for this other SMU.

http://www.stmarytx.edu/athletics/

smupony94 wrote:
They fire stewardesses for being more than a size 4.

jtstang wrote:You'd have to fly to Singapore, but you could road trip for this other SMU.

http://www.stmarytx.edu/athletics/

SoCal_Pony wrote:Don't forget

Shanghai Maritime University

Currently, SMU has a full-time student population of near 15,000, of whom over 10,000 are studying for a Bachelor’s degree and over 2000 for a Master’s degree. For decades of years, SMU is devoted to fostering qualified talents for shipping industry. SMU has provided the shipping enterprises, public institutions and government departments with over 40,000 graduates. SMU is therefore honored as "Cradle of qualified shipping personnel".

jtstang wrote:Would you marry a sailor?