Remember the days when $1.25 trillion was a lot of money?
Dec 2nd, 2007 | Filed under: Hedge Fund Industry Trends“Dr. Evil: Here’s the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for…ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Number Two: Don’t you think we should ask for more than a million dollars? A million dollars isn’t exactly a lot of money these days.
Dr. Evil: Okay then, we hold the world ransom for…One… Hundred…BILLION DOLLARS!
In the string of classic movies about a randy, orthodontically-challenged British spy from the 1960’s named Austin Powers, comedian Mike Myers plays the prototypical bad-guy “Doctor Evil.” Frozen in time since the summer of love, Doctor Evil concocts a plan to hold the world of 1997 ransom for the then astronomical sum of one million dollars. When his second in command “Number Two” played by Robert Wagner tells him that one million dollars is wildly out of date, he quickly adjusts the figure upward hoping no one would really notice.
In a way, that’s what is happening now in the game of guess-the-size-of-the-hedge-fund-industry. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last week, some pundits have recently pegged the number at $1.25 trillion (with pinky firmly planted at edge of mouth a la Myers). But without missing a beat, other experts have recently put it at $1.48 trillion and even at $2.48 trillion (see graphic from WSJ below).
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