Unstructured Finance

The SkyBridge Alternatives Conference – the annual hedge fund blowout better known as SALT, is a month away. And the official agenda for the three-day bacchanal, which sees thousands of hedge fund investors, allocators and hedge fund hangers-on descend on Las Vegas in the second week of May, has been released.

Many regular SALT-goers will tell you, of course, that as the event has grown in popularity its official agenda has become but one part of the conference. A sideshow to goings-on inside the Bellagio are the unofficial meetings going on outside, in the hotel’s poolside cabanas.

But SALT gate-crashers – a growing group of people who don’t pay for tickets to the conference but rock up to the Bellagio to network poolside with SALT’s paying guests – will be disappointed to know that the cabanas are a costly and official part of the event this year. The bungalows were all scooped up by SALT organizers, according two people familiar with the plans, and offered to guests for $20,000 for duration of the conference, as part of a sponsorship package that includes branding and passes to attend the event.

Anthony Scaramucci, who’s fund of hedge fund firm Skybridge puts on the conference, recruits some of the best known names in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry to speak at the event, as well as big-ticket political figures like George W. Bush. This year’s list of international headliners includes former Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. There’s also a fireside chat between former Israeli leader Ehud Barak and Leon Panetta, ex-U.S Defense Secretary and ex-Director of the CIA.

And Hollywood is coming to hedge fund land this year. Al Pacino and director Oliver Stone are both speaking. (Scaramucci has a link to both – he is an executive producer on an upcoming Pacino movie, and he consulted on Stone’s sequel to Wall Street, 2010′s Money Never Sleeps).

The following is a contribution from our chief Federal Reserve reporter, who is out in the field  at The Economist magazine’s annual economics conference:

By Jonathan Spicer

What is the most overvalued asset across the world’s advanced economies? Vincent Reinhart, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, posed that rhetorical question on Thursday at one of New York’s signature economics conferences. After a pause: “The answer is, voters’ expectation of the net present value of the entitlements they … are expecting. Why? Because they by and large don’t have a tax system to support that,” Reinhart said.

It was a cold shot of reality as the United States roars toward the so-called “fiscal cliff” on Jan. 1, when a series of automatic tax rises and spending cuts will take hold and seriously damage the economy – unless lawmakers step in to prevent them. Most economists and investors are still betting the worst of the cliff will be avoided, probably by putting off tough questions on tax reform and longer-term government spending. That means Congress kicking the can down the road – yet again – on finally setting a plan to meaningfully reduce the massive U.S. debt after three straight years of budget deficits topping $1 trillion.

By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan

There’s nothing surprising about FHFA head Ed DeMarco’s decision to nix the idea of writing down some of the debt owed by cash-strapped homeowners on mortgages guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie. DeMarco, whose agency regulates Fannie and Freddie, has been a consistent opponent of principal reductions–something we pointed out last October in our story on the need for a “great haircut” on consumer loans and including student and mortgage debt to stimulate the economy.

But DeMarco’s renewed opposition comes at a time that there is a growing consensus that something needs to be done on the housing front to get the U.S. economy going, as opposed to simply churning along at the current anemic rate of growth. More and more economists are saying that reducing mortgage debt will not only reduce foreclosures, it will give ordinary Americans more money to spend on goods and services.

It doesn’t take an MBA from Harvard to know that when people have spending power it translates into more demand and that usually prompts employers to hire more people to fill that demand.