The following is an edited transcript of remarks delivered by Jonah Goldberg and Cliff Asness at the 2023 Hamilton Award Dinner.
Jonah Goldberg: Good evening, everyone. You in the tux, please take your seat. So, I have a problem. I was told that this was going to be the Cliff Asness roast. And then Reihan came up to me and said that’s not the case. I'm actually here just to introduce Cliff as a recipient of the Alexander Hamilton Award, which is nice too, I guess. But it means I have to kill a whole bunch of material about that great lavish vacation that Cliff took me and Brett Kavanaugh on. Too soon?
There are a lot of important differences between Wall Street and Washington. It's been said that the most dangerous place in DC is to get caught between, say, Adam Schiff or Ted Cruz and a TV camera. On Wall Street, the most dangerous place to get caught is between Cliff and a computer monitor, particularly when those stupid numbers go the wrong way. Now, for those of you who don't get the reference, in May of 2009, the Wall Street Journal, you may have heard of it, profiled Cliff in a piece called “Hedge-Fund King is Forced to Regroup.” Now, I should say, this was not a great time for Cliff. The Rangers were struggling. Michael Jackson died. Also, the financial markets were, to paraphrase George Costanza, they were angry those days, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. And Cliff was angry too, which brings me back to this Journal story. The story recounted the firm's troubles, and then the Wall Street Journal reported, quote, "Later that year, Mr. Asness frequently erupted in his office smashing computer screens in anger according to people familiar with the matter." True story, you can look it up.
But Cliff took exception to this coverage. Cliff is a man who takes exceptions. He wrote a letter to the Journal, which I quote in full, "in your otherwise fine and fair chronicle of my rough last one or two years, you state that I was occasionally so mad I was ‘smashing computer screens in anger’ and that I confirmed this tale. True but misleading. It happened only three times and on each occasion the computer screen deserved it." It's got to be driving Cliff crazy that I'm getting applause for his jokes. Nevertheless, the story stuck and, look, that's just like the fake news media, right? You punched just three disrespectful computer monitors, and it follows you around wherever you go. In fact, big tech is in on it too, when I was preparing for tonight, I typed into the Google search engine, Clifford Asness, and the second immediate autofill was “punch his monitor.” The first was “Cliff Asness Twitter.”
Now, if you follow Cliff on Twitter, you understand why. Cliff's Twitter account is what you might expect from a man who takes exceptions. I sometimes imagine those poor people in the AQR communications team, chain-smoking cigarettes and white-knuckling it, until Cliff puts down his phone at night. I could spend the rest of the evening simply reading his exchanges with Nassim Taleb, and all of you would find that worthy of the price of the meal tonight. I'd say those debates harken back to earlier epic intellectual battles. William F. Buckley versus Gore Vidal. Jean-Paul Sartre versus Albert Camus. Godzilla versus Monster Zero.
But I suspect that Cliff would take exception. He'd probably say it was more like a debate between a sane person and Nassim Taleb. The truth is that Cliff is actually not a rageaholic, though he is occasionally profane. One can only imagine how much more profane he'd be if he hadn't married a pastor's daughter from Nebraska. No but seriously, Laurel Asness is conceivably the nicest person in the world. Mr. Rogers apparently once remarked, "It must be fricking exhausting being that nice all the time."
Anyway, I've only actually seen Cliff really lose his temper once. It was when the London Metals Exchange outrageously and arbitrarily voided billions in nickel deals. I know we all remember that dark day. It wasn't so much because he lost money. He might have, I don't know. It certainly wasn't why he was mad. It enraged him because Cliff loves markets and rigged markets offend him the way Napoleon offended the Jesuits when he used their churches as stables. That's the thing about Cliff. He's a true believer. He sincerely believes that freedom, especially economic freedom, isn't just a superior means of generating growth or distributing resources. He believes it's morally superior to the alternatives. He's also one of the most intellectually honest people I've ever met. He's perfectly happy to say, "I don't know" when he doesn't know something. But when he does know, he still shows his work. And I don't mean the occasional brilliant op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He is constantly putting out academic papers full of squiggly lines and Greek letters and other witchcraft explaining why he takes his positions, in every sense of the word.
In the annals of intellectual history, I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone who more truly and consistently put their money where their mouth is than Cliff Asness. Unsurprisingly, that goes for his philanthropy as well. Of course, Cliff is an active supporter of the Manhattan Institute and the Adam Smith Society. He loves this place dearly. He talks about it all the time. And the Manhattan Institute with the help of people like Cliff has basically become an intellectual green zone in an otherwise hostile occupied city. But all of this flows from the fact that Cliff Asness knows who he is. He's a Jewish kid, born in Queens, raised in Long Island. It may surprise some of you to know that someone so incandescently bald had one of the most impressive Jew-fros in all of Nassau County. I have a picture on my phone, come to me afterwards I'll show you. And keep in mind these were in the days when Nassau County was to Jew-fros what like Cuba was to pitchers—it was like impressive.
Anyway, Cliff is still that kid from Long Island, and he makes no apologies for it. He likes hockey and collecting comic books and spending time with his wonderful family. I can list all the awards and accomplishments, but the truth is he deserves the highest compliment I can give. He is truly a mensch. If he hadn't gone into finance and become wildly successful at it, I think he would've ended up as the exact same guy, albeit with fewer toys. He might even have ended up at working at someplace like the Manhattan Institute. He talks about it all the time, that that was sort of the plan. He might even been working here, writing brilliantly about free markets and the like. Though I suspect that Reihan would make him pay for those monitors. Cliff Asness is not just the man who takes exceptions. He’s an exceptional man and it is my profound honor and privilege to present or to introduce Cliff Asness for the 2023 Alexander Hamilton Award.
Cliff Asness: Thank you, Jonah. I may need to scrap some of my speech here just to rebut. The one thing I will not rebut is that my wife Laurel is the nicest person in the world. Though Jonah was actually kind because he didn't add the obvious rejoinder—she has to be. He also nailed it when he talked about what I might want to do with if I did it all over. For my next career, I basically want to be Jonah. I mean, let's be real, I want to make hedge-fund money, but doing Jonah's kind of work. I'm going to update my LinkedIn profile and see what's out there.
Before I felt the need to rebut Jonah, I was going to start by apologizing to those who had this land before us. Of course, I refer to the Dutch. So I promise most of my fire will be directed at the left, but a little bit to the right to start, okay? No one panic. I bring greetings from as the populist right would call us the rootless, cosmopolitan, globalist donor class. People who would sell our souls to China for some cheap crapola to sell.
Oh and according to them we're RINOs for believing in things conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians have believed in for hundreds of years, rather than obeisance to one rather dodgy man. If they keep clapping, can I go over my time? As a famous Sicilian once almost said, that word RINO, I don't think it means what they think it means. I also would like to say hi to the progressive left from as they would call us, our little band of bond villain oligarch plutocrats, also tagged as from the much-despised donor class, and whom they also believe would sell the country to China, this time for a slightly lower capital gains rate.
If you've noticed some overlap in my two greetings, you'll also notice that horseshoe theory is not just a river in Egypt. That doesn't work at all by the way, but I like it. I mean, among other things they agree, beyond all logic and evidence, that the American worker is in rapid decline. They're not. That we needed industrial policy that would make Lester Thurow blush, and that share repurchases are the devil's handmaiden. May God save us from populous socialists of any party affiliation.
Anyway, it's wonderful to be here tonight as we fete late-stage capitalism. Nope, I don't know what those words mean either, but this is important: neither do they. It's one of the modern phrases whose purpose is almost entirely not to be understandable, but to convey a fact-free feeling. Though if by late-stage capitalism they mean the most prosperous the world has ever been for the most people, then okay, sign me up. Mr. Gigot, who actually probably made the decision to run that insane letter of mine 15 years ago, will tell you that there's an editorial by Graham and Shlaes in today's Wall Street Journal if you want to see that this kind of made-up things about gilded ages and whatnot have been going on for quite a while. Now, if I can make some more serious comments, I'm going to spend some more time on this donor class thing. I'm going to defend some of my peeps. The cynicism directed at them from both—how do I put this politely—ass ends of this horseshoe is just at odds with what I see.
Here are some thoughts on the MI donor class and the Manhattan Institute in general that I might title “What I Saw at the Counterrevolution.” People familiar to MI and familiar to this room like Paul Singer, a political and philanthropic mentor to me. John Paulson, Ken Griffin, Dan Loeb, Ken Langone, Ravenel Curry, Stan Druckenmiller, the Hertogs, the Fedaks, the Crows, and many of you in the audience today at whatever scale you can help, are—to the best of my poor abilities to discern—truly not here so that we can import some cheap goods from China or even to lower our personal tax rates. No. That's why we move to Florida.
In fact, to a person, I'm guessing you have spent more dollars attempting to better society than it would ever be possible to recoup, even from a plutocrat-friendly administration. Those that think the donor class are in it for the money are also really just saying that the same donor class are terribly bad investors. I'm sorry, but that dog just won't hunt. Yes, that was indeed my impression of Albert Brooks doing an impression of Ann Richards. That had levels, you had to know the history there. But I told you my balance was only for the beginning. Here's the situation where the horseshoe doesn't come around. There is no equivalence—and I'll be doing some whining for the donor class now, just so you know—there's no equivalence between the left and right when it comes to their respective donor classes and the establishment's treatment of them.
The left's own donor class is generally esteemed by the dominant institutions of our time, whose bought-and-sold purpose is in fact to esteem them. Being a donor to the left usually means applause and approbation. Okay. Sometimes people on the right give it to that Soros guy. But otherwise, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. In contrast, their equivalents on the right are regularly castigated as robber barons who for instance, support charter schools only to reap massive profits down the road when they go public.
By the way, there are no profits to donors down the road and they are already public, but I digress. I mean, no leftists of the pundit or donor class, to the best of my knowledge, has ever had to do the equivalent of declaring my friend Harlan Crow does not love and worship totalitarianism. He doesn't. He's here tonight, I promise you. Nope. The worst they've had to say from the left is “no comment,” as to why they made a few dozen visits to Epstein Island or got a kickback to the big guy. And “no comment” actually works for them. “No comment" is really effective when the journalist—and I hate people who use air quotes, it's the cheapest most hackney thing, but you got to for this, right?—the hashtag journalists don't actually want a comment to begin with and are actually there to protect their target. I've always disliked gotcha questions, but I think “I'm trying my level best not to get you”–questions are even worse.
The men and women of the MI donor class are, again, to the best of my abilities to tell—and I'm often in these meetings except when the really big boys need the room—truly patriots that don't benefit but take risk doing what they do. Rather than applause and opprobrium—no, approbation. I've been getting those words wrong my whole life. There shouldn't be two words that have that same pentameter that mean the exact opposite thing. I'm going to try this again then: Rather than applause and approbation, they often face odium and opprobrium, and sometimes even aggressively ample alliteration.
Now of course, that doesn't mean MI's donors are right about everything or agree amongst themselves about everything, but things you do when you're facing opprobrium just get you more street cred than things you do when your biggest risk is big applause. So, I would venture just a few things that I have some confidence they and the MI community in general do agree upon. They do not obsess about their personal tax rates. They obsess about the country. They believe in the free enterprise system, not because they want to become yet richer, but because they want everyone to become richer. They actually do understand that it's not their lives that will be much better in a better system. And amazingly, they don't have the ego to think free enterprise only works for themselves.
They believe in merit, not because they've demonstrated it themselves, which many or even most or maybe all have, but because it's what makes civilization prosper, and because the merit that we're still allowed to acknowledge today is why we're not yet a dystopian hellscape best observed from Gold’s Gulch. They believe in equality of opportunity, not as a defense against the left's accusations, but as a matter of civic religion and the noblest of goals. They believe in school choice, not because they hate unions, but because they love kids. And for that matter they love teachers. They also realize education is what made their blessed lives possible, and yet again, they know they're not that special. Education can save anyone. They believe in free speech because—do I really need a reason for that one? Seems self-explanatory. They believe in keeping civil order, not because they hate squeegee men and own window repair companies. That's another MI deep cut by the way. But because they know a safe, fair, and well policed city is important to everyone, but again, spectacularly so to those less fortunate than themselves.
When I do the quant presentations, nobody applauds during the various stages. They believe in constitutional government, not as a tool of plutocrat rule, but for what it is. A written down set of rules to be followed until amended, and yes, some of those amendments were damn important. They know that having these rules is the vital difference between a just, stable, and, again, civil society versus being ruled by the ephemeral whims of men ultimately backed by guns. But now you may have been thinking, I've forgotten about the Manhattan Institute. That's fair, but not remotely true. I say that a lot in my life. That's fair, but not true. I've been discussing them implicitly in almost every line so far. MI is not a monolith either, and I don't purport to speak for all our scholars and stakeholders, but I think what I've been talking about is pretty darn in line with the ethos here. The Manhattan Institute, only named that because the Manhattan Project was taken, has long been a voice of reason in New York City and in fact on national issues.
They, in my humble opinion, stand for some pretty great things also. They stand for people of all walks of life being able to live in safety, to educate their children effectively, to prosper economically, and to live as free men and women with all the rights and obligations, successes and failures and joys and pains that brings. And they fight. Paul talked about this, and I said, "I'm still going to do this section anyway, even though he took it." They fight. The populist right—one of the few things I think they’re kind of correct on is sometimes we need more fighters. That's going to piss off Jonah, and unlike me to give an inch to them. But sometimes we need more fighters, and sometimes we could be too pleased with our intellectual prowess to get our hands dirty.
MI scholars do not generally have that problem from Heather Mac Donald, who I definitely would not want to fight. To Glaeser, to Gelinas, to Larry, to Malanga, to Schrager, to Fryer, Riley, Shapiro, and Copland, they fight. Say those last four with me, Fryer, Riley, Shapiro, and Copland. That would be a great name for a law firm would it not? Not as good as Archie Bunker's lawyers, the famous firm of Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz, and Rabinowitz. Archie described them—and I'm only quoting Norman Lear here, and I'm part of the tribe, so you can't cancel me for this—Archie described them as “seven savage Jews who won't leave a scrap on your bones.” No, it's not that good a name, but it's pretty good. Obviously, that list of names, that I pretended to rattle off but of course had written down, is nowhere near exhaustive. I just picked a few whose work I love and left out too many others. In the immortal words of a Seinfeld episode, you're all winners. I actually mean it in this case, though.
So, our scholars are not just right and not just brilliant, but they're courageous, brilliant fighters for what's right. They run into the breach, not just once more, but again and again. And for that, and much more, I thank them. Of course, I'd like to end by thanking not just them, but everyone at MI, from those same scholars I've already discussed to those I couldn't mention as to do so would take way more minutes than Reihan would give me, to Reihan himself and the team who makes it all happen. And even to again, my fellow members of the donor class who support these efforts. I'll see you fellas at the next naked cavorting in the woods coming up in June. You know where. Thank you, MI. Thank you for this honor tonight. It is very special to me, but more so thank you for giving me the opportunity to support you as you fight for prosperity, liberty, and civil society itself. Goodnight.