This morning, a hedge fund manager with a large position in embattled pharma company Valeant held a three hour conference call to assuage investor concerns about its 50% crash over the last few months. It’s not working so far, the stock is bleeding all over the exchange as of this posting. My take on whether…

there’s a lot to think about here.

…but that doesn’t mean that they’ll put that spending power to work! Although betting against the US consumer’s proclivity to buy stuff has not been a great bet historically… OK, enough dissembling. Here’s Lord Abbett’s Milton Ezrati making the case that households are in better shape than most give them credit for: Households, still some…

Importantly of note, the Fed completely eliminated this statement from their September meeting:

Before there was the Wolf and a century before Bernie, there was “the Jackal of Wall Street.”

This is an actual hedge fund that exists that you – some of you – are putting money into:

With the current valuation discount between developed market equities and emerging market equities, you are being compensated for this reality.