Cliff Asness on the audacity of the government's anti-Goldman crusade...

It's pretty remarkable when you think about it.  A government that encourages poor people to buy lottery tickets is outraged - outraged! - that sophisticated investors are trading amongst themselves without the government getting more of that loot....

Cliff Asness, "Keep the Casino's Open":

By the way, and for the record, government loves betting, it just doesn’t love free people betting amongst themselves without government wetting its beak. Government loves Powerball. Government loves OTB. Government loves legalized casinos that pay big taxes. So please, don’t tell me it’s a moral thing about gambling, or about government protecting us from ourselves. It’s a power and revenue thing where the government wants it all.

 For fun, let’s talk about Powerball some more. Government monopolizes and promotes about the most regressive scheme in history (let's make a giant number of poor people a little poorer to make one poor person super-rich) and this causes them no shame whatsoever. But, at least after selecting each Powerball winner the government has one new "fat cat not doing his fair share" to demonize.

Keep the Casinos Open