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holzman_tweedIt's hardly the first time I've known someone running for high office -- my cousin Dick has been on NY's state assembly for as long as I can remember. My old boss, former Vegas card counter and options arbitrageur Blair Hull ran for the U.S. Senate. At first, I thought it was pretty cool -- his politics sounded right when I knew him (insofar as anyone getting rich in the cess-pit that is the financial trading industry can).
Then it came to light that he had a history of domestic violence. As such things go, it was a brief history, possibly something someone might have been able to construe as an "I fucked up at a crisis moment in my life, I got better" type of thing if Blair hadn't been bone stupid about how he handled it.
As it turned out, he was bone stupid about how he handled it, betting that his ex-wife would let him call her a liar in public if the alternative was having the privacy of their divorce invaded to support her side of the story.
Blair forgot his own first rule: never risk enough on a bet that losing will put you out of the game. He taught everyone else at Hull that. He dinged people for not taking the lesson to heart in quantifiable ways. He explained that when people interviewed him for books on how to get rich playing the market.
He bet more than he could afford to lose. It wasn't even a smart bet, he bet it on a bluff. Her downside risk was miniscule compared to his, and she called his bluff. In a past life, Blair had a thing or two to teach about risk analysis, too. More of one's own life lessons lost. His candidacy started imploding.
Then some stories about pot and coke use came out but c'mon, the man was a pit trader. Saying he used coke was practically redundant.
Then someone helped him fuck up at the last minute, and a TV station accidentially ran an attack ad meant only to be run if someone ran on him first. Shit happens, but expensive shit happens in the market as well, and you're supposed to prepare for that.
As I write this, Blair's been spanked by the voters of Illinois. It's estimated that Blair got 92,183 voted after spending $29 million of his own dollars. That's $314.95 per vote -- it would have been cheaper for him to sit the election out and buy the winner. (This is Chicago we're talking about, after all.) He's got over half a billion of his own money left, so I can't feel too bad for him.
At Hull, we liked to do "After Action Summaries" to find the "lessons learned." (We never called them post mortem because that name implied failure of the project, which wasn't always the case. It seems to me that the lessons learned are:
Then it came to light that he had a history of domestic violence. As such things go, it was a brief history, possibly something someone might have been able to construe as an "I fucked up at a crisis moment in my life, I got better" type of thing if Blair hadn't been bone stupid about how he handled it.
As it turned out, he was bone stupid about how he handled it, betting that his ex-wife would let him call her a liar in public if the alternative was having the privacy of their divorce invaded to support her side of the story.
Blair forgot his own first rule: never risk enough on a bet that losing will put you out of the game. He taught everyone else at Hull that. He dinged people for not taking the lesson to heart in quantifiable ways. He explained that when people interviewed him for books on how to get rich playing the market.
He bet more than he could afford to lose. It wasn't even a smart bet, he bet it on a bluff. Her downside risk was miniscule compared to his, and she called his bluff. In a past life, Blair had a thing or two to teach about risk analysis, too. More of one's own life lessons lost. His candidacy started imploding.
Then some stories about pot and coke use came out but c'mon, the man was a pit trader. Saying he used coke was practically redundant.
Then someone helped him fuck up at the last minute, and a TV station accidentially ran an attack ad meant only to be run if someone ran on him first. Shit happens, but expensive shit happens in the market as well, and you're supposed to prepare for that.
As I write this, Blair's been spanked by the voters of Illinois. It's estimated that Blair got 92,183 voted after spending $29 million of his own dollars. That's $314.95 per vote -- it would have been cheaper for him to sit the election out and buy the winner. (This is Chicago we're talking about, after all.) He's got over half a billion of his own money left, so I can't feel too bad for him.
At Hull, we liked to do "After Action Summaries" to find the "lessons learned." (We never called them post mortem because that name implied failure of the project, which wasn't always the case. It seems to me that the lessons learned are:
- Remember your own life's lessons.
- You cannot escape your past, in this world or the next. So you'd damn well better embrace it
- Never bet so much that losing will put you out of the game.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-16 10:04 pm (UTC)You cannot escape your past, in this world or the next. So you'd damn well better embrace it
Never bet so much that losing will put you out of the game."
You could not have picked a better time to remind me of this, thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-17 08:24 am (UTC)