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I’m guessing that Harvard doesn’t dip into the principal of the endowment, and uses the yearly growth and dividends, but that’s simplistic. Six months ago, the S&P 500 was at ~3000, and now it’s back up between 2700-2800. It seems like their endowment would be pinched somewhat (and the article says it shrank), but maybe the bigger story is that they still have to maintain the facilities, plus they have to support more eLearning and other increased expenses, plus corporate grants and research dollars aren’t coming in.
The article mentions new expenses rising and other financial channels shrinking, but doesn’t say much about either.
I’ve seen corporations lock down and postpone expenses that can be postponed, and that might be hitting Harvard harder than not getting dorm fees and student dining.
For athletic departments, I’m not sure how much big donors are affected, but I’m sure recent graduates are watching their pennies and dimes more than ever, and the middle donors are watching their jobs and companies to make sure they can make it through. I was glad to see Stansbury say we were still on track for AI 2020, but you’d think that donations are getting pinched a lot, in addition to ticket sales.
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I did read an article a few days ago about this. From an AA standpoint (this is not GT specific), they are losing revenue due to lower ticket sales, lower donations, and they expect they will lose revenue even with games as they expect fewer people to attend games if they have them and spend less money at them.
I'll freely admit I didn't take this virus seriously enough at the beginning. I remember talking to colleagues at lunch back in Jan and we just brushed it off, didn't think it would be a big deal. And that was even though one colleauge has a Chinese wife who was saying her relatives in China were telling her that the reality was alot worse than the Chinese were reporting and another colleague has a wife who works at the CDC and she was scared about what would happen in the US if it wasn't contained early - even by mid-January the researchers at the CDC were working really long hours trying to figure this one out. It wasn't until it hit Italy that I started to take it seriously and frankly at that point it was already probably too late for the US as it was already circulating in the US by then just waiting to explode on us. And just like most, it was Conference Tournament week that it finally hit home that the US was in a serious bad place.
My opinion is this could end up being a bigger jolt to the economy than the financial crisis of 2008. That was a man-made financial disaster caused by Financial companies (I work for a financial services company, but not one of the Wall Street ones that were engaging in the derivatives game) being greedy and dishonest. This is a natural, world-wide disaster that is going to be alot harder to fix than the financial shenanigans of 2008. At first I thought this would be a minor economic blip, but I no longer believe that. All the data I see now suggests this is going to be a really hard, sustained recession even with everything the Federal Government and the Fed have done to try to prop things up. We're not going to get anywhere close to 100% economic activity in the country for the rest of this year. Frankly imo we won't get close to 100% until we have a combination of both medical therapies and a vaccine. This one is worse because people are not just scared about their jobs, they are scared about their health -that is very different than 2008 and leads to different behaviors.
One economist said if we open up the economy right now it will fail. His take is right now people are scared about being in any size groups with other people, whether that be in a store or at work. Recent polls suggest the majority of citizens right now would rather sit at home and deal with lost wages than go into an office and possibly contract a disease that they worry could kill them or their family.