How Dr. Anthony Fauci invests.
Fauci invests his money about the way I would expect an 81-year-old practicing physician to invest.
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| Senator Marshall |
After questioning by Kansas senator Roger Marshall yesterday, Dr. Fauci was caught on a hot microphone saying "moron" and "Jesus Christ" in frustration. The senator's comments were accusations and statements, disguised as questions. The senator asked:
As the highest paid employee in the entire federal government, yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?
The answer to the question is YES, and Marshall and his staff should have known it. Fauci has been making financial disclosures for decades.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7014520-Fauci-Disclosure
Fauci's income as a full-time physician is commonplace. Salaried government physicians generally make less than ones in private practice, but the government needs to be competitive to staff its military and VA hospitals. Fauci has been getting step increases for 37 years.
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Government disclosure forms disguise the amounts of money, but not the income and gains from it. An experienced eye can make guesses. Dr. Fauci appears to have a couple of million dollars invested. There are no individual stocks of the kind one would see if Fauci were interested in making money from "inside" knowledge. He delegates investment decisions. He mostly owns equity funds, not bonds. He doesn't need investment income. He has earned income.
His Schwab advisor put him in a variety of institutionally-priced funds. Some generate income: Hamlin High Dividend Fund. There is a mid-cap growth fund: JPMorgan Mid-cap Value Fund. There are funds holding international stocks, the Matthews Pacific Tiger Fund and Tweedy Brown Global Value Fund. No retail investor, including Fauci, has any influence or fore-knowledge on the investments in these funds. What I see is huge diversification that essentially represents a little of everything. He might simply have bought three index Exchange Traded Funds and saved money on fees. A 30% SP500 index ETF; 30% a global total market index ETF; 30% municipal bond ETF; and 10% cash would create a return essentially identical to what Fauci experiences.
The mix of funds is the Schwab advisor's way to demonstrate value for the fee they charge for investment advice. After all, they picked JPMorgan Mid-Cap Value Fund, presumably for some good reason, instead of a different, essentially-identical one. The Schwab advisor's fee for investment advice bundles their more general advice on estate planning, education of grandchildren, etc. The multiple funds, even if they end up representing the whole market, demonstrates attention and care. This would be useful for Schwab and its advisor if there were to be a 60% drop in the stock market. The client might be unhappy. The stock funds in this account would drop 60% as well, of course, but at least it will look like Schwab advisor tried to do well. The loss would be attributable to the market, not to careless advice. Diversification of this kind allows an advisor to take action during bad markets. One can make trivial changes, selling one East Asian fund for a different one. In bad markets clients like Advisors to show they are doing something.
The multiplicity of funds protects Fauci, too. Fauci can credibly plead that he has no special investment favorite because he has so many investments that bundle yet more investments. He can credibly say that the Schwab advisor made the decisions, not him. The portfolio is not the most efficient, but it serves a purpose for Fauci. It fulfills the Hippocratic principle: First do not harm.
Fauci did what he could do to avoid suspicion and criticism. It doesn't matter. Senator Marshall had an agenda.
16 comments:
Pretty much what you would expect, thanks. I don't think Dr. Fauci's career was for financial gain, although it's a predictable, despicable Republican tactic to accuse him of self dealing. It's unfortunate that Dr. Fauci has become a right wing target, unacceptable that he is being threatened, and 100% correct that it's due to Paul and the others politicizing the pandemic.
One thing I'm pretty sure of; it wasn't a "hot mic" moment. He fully intended that his comment would be heard. Marshall is a piece of work, a doctor himself, and knows fully well what he's doing and fully deserves the contempt.
I felt he should have pushed back harder, maybe even resign, in response to the Trump mishandling of the pandemic. By staying on the job he became an enabler, giving a sheen of respectability to the quackery.
The argument that things would have been worse without him is debatable.
I watched the exchange between Dr. Fauci and Marshall, as well as the one with Rand Paul, and my biases might be showing through,but it seems to me that both Regressives trieing to smear Dr. Fauci had their flaming bags of feces blow up in their faces, as often seems to happen with incompetent clowns. I agree with Rick in that Dr. Fauci (and the woman Dr.whose name escapes me) might have been better served by resigning early on in the debacle stage managed by Trump. I really do wonder how much worse it might have been.
How about had they not resigned. But rather had called out the idiots for what they were and been fired. That would have been courageous.
Are you thinking of Birx?
If so, she is in worse shape.
Speaking of money, how much taxpayer money did this freak show waste?
I don't think Fauci was caught on a hot mike. I think he was saying what most sane Americans were thinking.
Yes, that's who I couldn't think of. Thanks.
It's laughable to me that someone at Fauci's stage of life and with his history of public service would be oriented toward some big financial gain. To what end? Bigger estate to pass on?
Marshall (and his ilk) knows there's no substance there. He's spouting nonsensical accusations that provide sound bites and twitter lines for his base to repeat to show he's on the right team. It's the equivalent to "when did you stop beating your wife?"
Tony the Toxic Gnome will ultimately fall far and fall hard, I predict, but it won't be from this silliness over his finances. It will be because of his shameful politicized decision to help protect China from any accountability, for the sake of some sort of globalist-Left conception of international harmony and utility. Once the saturation point via document disclosures is finally reached, his reputation will go the way of his onetime yuk-yuk mutual admiration society, ersatz media-darling paisano Andrew Cuomo--from 60 to zero in ten seconds. This pompous martinet will implode.
Assuming no worse than negligence from China on COVID-19's origin and unleashing, Fauco from the get-go conducted public relations for the Chinese regime, co-opting government, media and social media in that cause, by prematurely quashing the lab-origin theory, by carrying Chinese water on China's active hindrance of any conclusive origin investigation to this very day, AND, perhaps worst of all, because independent of the foregoing, failing to denounce China's initial lies with its lapdog the WHO about the nature and person-to-person transmissibility of the virus long after they knew better. They blocked movement into and around China, while sending folks out as usual. A British university study estimated that over 80% of all COVID cases globally could have been averted if China and the WHO stopped lying about it just one month sooner. That is the biggest of all travesties associated with COVID-19.
An interesting commentary by a blogger I open every morning, right after I read Peter Sage.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a38738927/rand-paul-dr-anthony-fauci-death-threats-fundraising/
The only reason Dr. Fauci is the highest paid federal employee is because there’s no federal football team. Coaches are the highest paid state employees, raking in millions.
Republicans demonize Dr. Fauci because he had the audacity to contradict their cult leader with facts. The seriously deranged accuse him of colluding with China to create the coronavirus. Senator Marshall’s attempted smear was so lame, I wondered if it was a ‘false flag operation’ like the Jan. 6 insurrection (according to the Oregon GOP). Nope. I checked and sure enough, he’s a Republican – further proof they really are as dumb as they act.
MZC: I think Dr. Birx created her own mess.
And I tend to agree with Art Baden, letting themselves be fired might have been more courageous, but not being them, I can't really know what was in their heads.
Low Dungeon parrots the same baseless allegations against Dr. Fauci that can be heard on white-wing media.
Before WHO ever commented on the lab leak theory, Trump was singing China’s praises. For example, on Jan. 27, 2020: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
When it didn’t work out so well is when he began referring to the “Kung Flu” and “China virus,” figuring that would appeal to his racist base. As it stands, there’s insufficient evidence to support any theory, but most scientists still consider a natural origin of the coronavirus to be more likely than a lab leak.
So easy to call names these days especially when so many know absolutely nothing about the field of virus detection and. The science of vaccine creation or even the end of a micron microscope.
Loved Sages lecture on investments. So who’s got money left to invest? A different world most never know.
Ralph—
Easy, indeed. And fun. Easy too to make that the avoidant extent of the objecting rejoinder. Meanwhile, feel free to refute in any respect the bill of accusations here against Fauci’s (public) characterizations of COVID-19 origins and responsibility therefor.
Dungeon -
You're asking Ralph to prove Dr. Fauci's innocence against your gratuitous "bill of accusations." That's not how it works.
Re: investing
I've been lucky.
Wife and I are fully faxed and boosted. We also wear masks, usually, especially when asked or in close quarters. We also travel and explore. Here in central Florida, we go to the theater, restaurants, Disney World, Universal Studios, and our entertainment squares here in The Villages. We entertain guests in our home, play pickleball, and play golf with friends. We have neighbors and friends who have gotten COVID. And more recently, we have many friends who have tested positive. So far, we are COVID free, and test weekly before having any gatherings we host.
We are either lucky, or have more immunity than others. Perhaps our active lifestyle helps ward off COVID.
But back to investing.
Back in the 70s, we needed the warnings: there wouldn't be any social security by the time we reached retirement age. So we not only saved (401K and IRAs), we also invested in the stock market. In the early 80s, our hi-tech pensions from Intel and Tektronix we're stopped and rolled over into 401Ks. No pensions for us.
Here we are, now retired, and quite happy we don't have to work. Our investments have done well, and we both are waiting until we are 70 1/2 before drawing Social Security as we are healthy, will likely live past the SS expected death age, and appreciate the added 8% additional we will get each year from SS until then.
We've pretty much stopped managing our own investments, and have told Fidelity to do their best delivering 8% return each year. This far, they are exceeding that goal.
I've also learned how to do backdoor Roth conversions, and am paying more than my fair share in taxes each year to protect our earned wealth.
My wife and I came from poor families in the 70s. We both had student loans and scholarships to pay for our college education. We paid them off, and worked hard to get to retirement. We earned what we have today.
As for Fauci, I give him credit, too. He has just overstayed his welcome, and might consider to do something different in his sunset years.
We certainly figured that out. Our sunset years will hopefully be rewarding.
Me? Yes, I am right leaning and a Republican. My hard work has helped me and my family and friends.
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