To the Editor:

Re: “Assembly members defend decisions,” Letters, Nov. 3

Some Background:

The Student Assembly invited Cornell Cinema to apply for activity fee funding in the late 1980s. At that time, and since its inception in 1970, the Cinema has been a hybrid organization, run by a professional staff, with students serving in an advisory capacity and as employees actively engaged in the organization. There are legions of Cornell alums who were involved with the Cinema as students and consider that involvement to be a significant part of their Cornell experience.

Correction appended.

Last Thursday, the Student Assembly rejected Cornell Cinema’s appeal of a 22-percent cut in their byline funding over the next two academic years. This decision, which will seriously compromise one of our University’s most important cultural institutions, was a triumph of bureaucratic ineptitude and willful narrow-mindedness.

As yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, President Barack Obama delivered a speech at New York City’s Federal Hall, urging Congress to pass stronger financial regulations in the coming year.

Obama started off by praising the “terrific leadership” of his administration during the past year, saying that the recovery plan has restored “capital and confidence” and assured that “the storms of the past two years are beginning to break.”

Blaming Wall Street’s “unchecked excess” for the crisis, the president urged that the U.S. economy needs “strong rules of the road to guard against … systemic risks” of the financial sector.

About five months ago, I was invited to Manhattan for a recruitment weekend at a well-respected New York City hedge fund. Sadly, I had no idea what a hedge fund actually does, so I turned to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia told me that hedge funds are investment funds that “hedge” against market fluctuation by engaging in a variety of fiduciary tactics, most notably short-selling. Short-selling, it seems, is a technique whereby investors borrow stock from a lender and sell it on the open market, with the expectation that the stock price will go down. Short-sellers can then repurchase the stock for the lower price, return it to the lender and pocket the difference.

This story was originally published on March 16.

Addressing Cornell’s approximately $230 million deficit, President David Skorton summarized the University’s current financial situation and answered pointed questions from an audience of at least 200 this afternoon in an open forum aimed for faculty and staff in Statler Auditorium.

Most of the questions raised were centered on the subject of workforce reduction. Skorton said several times during the question-and-answer session that there would be more layoffs in the future.

David Friehling ’81, Bernard Madoff’s chief auditor, is the first person after Madoff to be charged in connection with the $65 billion Ponzi scheme that fooled 4,800 investors. After surrendering at the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, Friehling was released on a bail of $2.5 million that afternoon.

Friehling, who is 49 years old, was charged with one count of securities fraud, one count of aiding and abetting investment adviser fraud, and four counts of making false Securities and Exchange Commission filings, according to the Associated Press. If found guilty on all charges, Friehling could face up to 105 years in prison.

Financing typically comes in two sizes for businesses: very large or very small. Large-scale financing caters to the needs of large businesses, while small-scale financing answers the needs of tiny enterprises. In a manner reminiscent of Goldilocks’ perfect fit, Root Capital — a nonprofit social investment fund based in Cambridge, Mass. — aims to provide much-needed capital to help such medium-sized businesses grow.

Last night, students and faculty alike gathered in the Plant Science Building for a lecture entitled “Beyond Microfinance: Finance for the ‘Missing Middle’ in Africa and Latin America” to learn more about the financing avenues made available to medium-sized enterprises through Root Capital.

Economists are scientists. They take data. They run statistical tests. Then, they boil down human behavior to elegant mathematical models: G+I+Xn+C =GDP, MRS=-p1/p2 etc. However, as sophisticated as these models may be, they don’t always work in practice.

Several years ago, the returns of two portfolios compiled by a brie eating, Armani wearing analyst at Merrill Lynch and an innocent monkey throwing darts at a page of the Wall-Street Journal were compared, and the differences were negligible. The Subprime mortgage, created by intelligent Ivy League graduates fluent in computer programming and financial modeling, shattered the global economy and literally brought the house down. Your browser may not support display of this image.

Stocks crashing! Endowments disappearing! Budgets trimming! The start of this semester has seen incredibly trying times as establishments across the country fall to shambles. In light of the times, the University plans to cut budgets across the board. Our crack team of Berrypatch reporters have also discovered that in order to pick up some of the fiscal slack, the University Board of Trustee’s voted to incur its own budget cuts for its upcoming Trustee Weekend. The following provisions are to take place ...

Pack ’em like Sardines

To the Editor:

Re: “In disagreement with Resolution 21,” Opinion, Feb. 2

As a sponsor of the resolution, I want to more thoroughly explain why I sponsored a moratorium on the registration of new student groups for this semester.

Let me begin by stating again that none of the sponsors enjoyed placing a hold on any group that would want to register this semester. This moratorium allows us the chance to overhaul an incredibly flawed system which, in the past, has wasted your money. $75 from your Student Activity Fee is allocated to the SAFC, and that money has gone to waste in ways that the SAFC cannot prevent.