[Steven] Cohen’s fund, SAC Capital Advisors, has reached a deal with the government to plead guilty to securities fraud.
That simple sentence, in today’s New York Times, says it all.
One of this nation’s great Ivy League universities has cleaved to and passionately defended its highest-profile trustee, Steven Cohen, ever since people began asking why this massive cheater, this embodiment of everything that’s wrong with America’s rancid hedge funds, sits in a position of influence and respect on a great university’s board of trustees.
If this were Yeshiva University, currently seeking trustee replacements for Bernard Madoff and Ezra Merkin, UD could understand. But although Brown’s last president was one of the Goldman Sachs trustees who approved Lloyd Blankfein’s breath-taking bonuses, it has not, until now, looked like ridiculously corrupt YU.
And speaking of Merkin: UD can only assume Cohen is consulting with him on how to unload your art when your stink bomb of an investment fund implodes. Today’s New York Times article on Cohen is mainly about his having to sell some of his more significant pieces to pay off the billion plus fines he’s got coming from the SEC. Which brings back memories of Merkin – also pursued for hundreds of millions by all sorts of private and government entities – dismantling his Rothko room.
It’s a poignant picture for sure – these art lovers sitting among the ruins of their collections while awaiting the collection agents from the government. But while Merkin has lost his university trusteeship, Cohen still sits among those women and men tasked with the moral welfare of one of America’s most prominent sites of higher learning. At least he’s got that.