My piece on hedge funds is up now.

You’ve probably heard about hedge funds. Hedge funds are private pools of money, on the orders of billions of dollars. They are usually secretive. Ten thousand hedge funds are registered in the Cayman Islands. Why are they registered in the Caymans? So they can be secretive and avoid taxes.

Journalists tend to be naturally suspicious of secrecy, but there are good hedge funds. Ones that have a very narrow strategy they pursue. That don’t borrow huge amounts of money, that don’t speculate and drive up the price of oil or drive down the price of Ford, and that generally don’t concentrate on investments that almost nobody understands.

But the bad ones can be really bad. Because they move so much (borrowed) money in and out of the markets, they are blamed for the extreme market gyrations we’ve seen in the past few weeks. They will speculate on anything. The spectacular collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 had much to do with its bets on volatility itself.

So why do people invest in hedge funds? Well, not everybody does. Minimum investment is $5 million or so. And 20 percent of all profits goes to the fund managers, some of whom earned $1 billion in a single year.

Even with those huge hurdles, hedge funds managed $2 trillion when things were going well. And they did extremely well for their investors.

Those who did invest in hedge funds were sometimes drawn in by the promise of absolute return. That hedge funds will use sophisticated trading techniques and will always make money. No matter what. Long-Term Capital Management was run by a Nobel Prize winner who convinced people that the fund’s mathematical models guaranteed returns. Until they didn’t.

Long-Term Capital Management lost $4.5 billion in nine months in 1998.  The Federal Reserve decided to intervene because it feared the fund’s collapse could trigger a full-blown panic.

Today, 10 years later, there are many more hedge funds.  They have been wildly successful over the past seven years, helped once again by Alan Greenspan’s cherished beliefs in cheap money and unfettered markets. And success is a very bad teacher, as Bill Gates says. Because it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Bloomberg reports that hedge fund assets will fall to $1 trillion by mid-2009. Some hedge funds lost quite a bit of money. Quite a few investors cashed out and fled to safety. And if Citigroup is right, we should remain seated because the turbulence is going to with us for some time.

So, I’ll be learning and writing more about hedge funds in the coming weeks. As always, I welcome comments, thoughts, criticisms, and musings, anonymous or not.

My piece last week on the “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War with the West” DVD that was handed out in political swing states a month before the election provoked some interest here and here.rent a car bulgaria The Guardian, based in London, quoted me as saying:

“Clarion was thinking of more creative ways to use newspapers than newspapers were,” Seth Hettena, a reporter who investigated the film for the Columbia Journalism Review, said.

Hettena described the free DVDs as “fall[ing] into a grey area, at the very least”. He cited the timing of the newspaper adverts, their distribution to 14 US states where voters are split on the presidential race, and Clarion’s ability to keep its donors secret under the tax laws.

The Altantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg said that Aish HaTorah, the group behind “Obsession,” is “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today.”

I actually have another idea for a film: I would call it “Obsession” as well, but it would be about the poor souls who believe that Obama is a radical Muslim, that Israel has a right to expel Arabs from its lands, and that America should declare war on all of Islam.

Who paid to distribute 22 million copies of “Obsession” via newspaper? We still don’t know.

It’s election time and once again Californians have to consider a whole host of ballot propositions on issues about which most of us know nothing.

As usual, the ones that have gotten the most attention are two hot-button social issues. A yes vote on Proposition 4 would require doctors to notify parents of pregnant minors seeking abortions. And Proposition 8 places the question of gay marriage before voters yet again.

There are 10 other state propositions that would issue billions of dollars in bonds in our nearly bankrupt state, improve life for farm animals, change sentencing rules for judges, force utilities to generate power from renewable energy, and so on.

In the past eight years, Californians have had more than 100 state propositions to consider ranging from Indian gaming compacts to chiropractor licensing. And that’s not counting the dozens of county and city initiatives. I, for one, am sick of it.

I used to spend considerable effort going through the phone-book sized voter guide. This time, I saved myself a lot of time. When I cast my absentee ballot a few weeks ago, I went down the line and filled in the “no” bubble for every single state proposition on the ballot.

Why? Because a no vote on a proposition changes nothing and puts the issue back where it belongs:  in the California Legislature. It’s the legislature’s job to consider these issues, understand the implications pro and con, hold hearings, hear from lobbyists and their constituents, talk to their colleagues and make an informed decision.

California’s initiative process is completely broken. Time and again, the initiatives passed by voters turn out to be ambiguous and too complex with many exceeding 10,000 words. The courts often throw them out. If they don’t, we’re stuck with them: California is the only state that doesn’t allow its legislature to amend initiatives after passage.

Nearly a century ago, California voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative system as a way to wrest control of the political process from  special interests like the Southern Pacific Railroad. It was supposed to empower ordinary citizens, but today it only serves the special interests. According to the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles think tank, the year we last saw an initiative qualify on the effort of volunteers was 1982.

Who are these special interests? People with money. Two-thirds of all contributions now come in amounts of $1 million or more. In 2006, Hollywood producer Steven Bing spent more than $48 million to finance Proposition 87, an alternative energy measure, but lost to an even costlier effort financed by oil companies.

An industry has sprung up to cater to these people. It costs about $3 million to qualify a measure for the ballot by paying people to sit outside supermarkets and hassle you for your signature. But the big money is in advertising. Two years ago, a total of $330 million was spent on all the measures in the general election, including $154 million on Bing’s Prop 87.

This is madness. Money has corrupted the initiative process, subverted its noble intent of empowering citizens, and turned propositions into tools for wealthy, special interests who can’t get what they want from our hapless legislature.

It’s time for average citizens to stop pretending that we are lawmakers. Stop encouraging the special interests. Take back the process by voting no on ALL propositions this November and every November and help to fix California’s broken political system.

Voting no on all state propositions isn’t liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. It’s a vote against the special interests and the money that ruined the process. It’s a vote in favor of good government. So, as Nancy Reagan liked to say, just say no.

Many people seem to having trouble with all the terms in the fiscal crisis. Here is a handy guide I have prepared. Hope this helps.

“Typical investor”

You go to the grocery store and buy an orange, take it home, and eat it when it ripens.

“Short seller”

You go to the grocery store. You borrow 100 oranges and immediately sell them to someone else. You wait for the price of oranges to go down. You buy 100 cheaper oranges, return them to the bank and pocket the difference in price. Everybody hates you.

“Hedge fund”

You take your rich uncle’s money, borrow more, and secretly buy lots of oranges on the cheap. Then you then drive up the price of oranges. At the same time, you short oranges. Either way, you keep 20 percent of profits. Everybody envies you.

“Pension fund”

You take a bowling league’s meager savings and try to copy what the hedge funds were doing. Everybody pities you.

“Warren Buffet”

Owns the orange groves. Always makes money.

“Alan Greenspan”

The aging greeter who encourages you to buy more oranges than you can afford.

“Subprime mortgages”

Rotting oranges infested with worms.

“Mortgage-backed securities”

You buy a huge amount of oranges — including the diseased ones — chop them up and sell the whole thing off in baskets of varying sizes and quality. Nobody knows what they are buying.

“Credit-rating agency”

Clerk who says the worm-infested oranges in the basket are really very sweet and delicious.

“Credit default swap”

Insurance in case the bad oranges spoils the bunch. Sold at checkout counter.

“Special Investment Vehicle (SIV)”

The store stashes the rotten oranges in the freezer and forgets about them.

“Investment Bank”

Cashier who pockets a few cents every time oranges are bought and sold. Stuck with lots of unsold fruit baskets.

“Treasury secretary”

Ex-cashier promoted to management.

“Federal bailout”

The government buys all the worm-infested oranges and makes you eat them.

I received a response today from the Justice Department to my request under the Freedom of Information Act  for former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s petition for clemency from President Bush. I’ve written about this here.

The Office of the Pardon Attorney withheld Cunningham’s clemency application as well as correspondence from his attorney, James B. Craven III. They did, however, provide some letters written on Cunningham’s behalf, which I have posted here. Some of these letters were written before Cunningham asked President Bush to commute his sentence in December 2007.

Cunningham, a Republican who represented the San Diego-area for 15 years, is the most corrupt congressman in history. He is serving a 100-month sentence for taking millions of dollars in bribes from two defense contractors. Cunningham was also the first flying ace of the Vietnam War. As the letters show, he is still a hero to some.

I’d like to hear your thoughts about this. Please leave a comment below.