Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

THESE are names that it is easy to get confused.  Blackstone is an alternatives asset manager that is also a publicly owned corporation (Nasdaq: BX). It recently exceeded $1 trillion in assets under management (AUM) for the first time. This means that its AUM figure is higher than the gross domestic product of the Netherlands.  Black stone was founded in 1985 with $400,000 in capital. If my arithmetuic is right, one needs to multiply 400 K by 2,500 to get a trillion. What a ride.  Yes, there are asset managers that have grown larger and quicker.  BlackRock for example has a larger AUM than its near namesake Blackstone. Indeed, BlackRock had close to $8.6 trillion the last time I checked. But most such others, including BlackRock, are in the high volume, low margin business of managing ETFs. . But Blackstone is a proper investment house: real estate, hedge funds, credit.  Blackwater? It has a name that sounds like it ought to be doing the same thing as the other...

The business section of   The New York Times had a fascinating profile of Michael Kines on June 24. "Michael who?"  Indeed. A lot of people will react that way. But attention falls on Michael Kines because of the upcoming trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, which I have discussed here.  High Profile Trials to Watch for in 2023: Part One (jamesian58.blogspot.com)   Bankman-Fried is to FTX what Ken Lay was to Enron and what Bernie Madoff was to Madoff Investment Securities. People, including prosecutors, have unsurprisingly become very curious about Bankman-Fried's social/business networking. This brings us back to Kines.  Kines was a typical southern California schmoozer, show biz adjacent. He parlayed a brief period working for former President Bill Clinton into success as a Hollywood agent (in which capacity he apparently got to know everybody in that world, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Larry David, etc.). From that he moved into another status pos...