If their performance is so horrible, then let the free market decide that it is and put the underperformers out of work? End any and all bailouts to banks and investment companies and let the chips fall where they may.
You're terribly wrong. The top hedge funds made their investors fortunes, and that is after fees. See: http://www.capitalholdings.com/en/Great Money Managers - Latest Research.pdf The top 10 hedge fund managers have earned more than $153bn for their investors since they were founded. It is foolish to believe that the remaining quartiles are in the red making for a total loss of the entire hedge fund universe.
I am not sure what is your point here. Are you trying to say that the market was going up last year most of the time, so it was bad for short funds ? There were at least 2 big drops, from mid-Jan we dropped 9% and from late Apr 16%, so there were nice opportunities for short funds to make money. Assuming a HF was able to catch just half of those moves, that is still 12% for a short fund in a positive year for the market....
Exactly right fanews! Clear mindedness is rarer and rarer these days. Somehow people think if you align yourself with performance artists, you become the performer. Its a kind of consumerist mantra thats found its way into the mimesis of the Market. Why else would Stanley Druckenmiller unwind his fund in 2011, Timothy Barakett unwound at the end of 2009.. And numerous other funds quietly close up shop? Because they know the jig is up!
That's just it though, the relationships are so cozy between high finance and high government and the machinations are so cloaked in secrecy that to a casual outsider it is very hard not to draw the conclusion that it's all just a giant shell game to steal taxpayer and investor money.