Interesting

Brief snippet about why Harvard could be in financial trouble despite a "50 billion" dollar endowment. 

Points:

1) 80% of their assets are in private equity and real estate and are essentially overvalued or not properly valued. Why? Because the things they own don't have many buyers. It's like owning a 50 million dollar house but needing 100K to buy something. Where do you get the money? You can't sell a bedroom. Plus, you can't easily sell a 50 million dollar house. You might have no buyers or one buyer. And with one buyer - guess what? He isn't paying 50 mil. So is it really worth 50 mil? 

2) So Harvard borrows against their assets. They have something like 7 billion in debt. Not the behavior of an entity with "50 billion".  They are looking to me house poor.

3) For "income," Harvard depends on a few sources: Fed government, donors, tuition. Trump is threatening Fed govt and tuition (by targeting foreign students who pay full freight). 

Interesting stuff. Harvard might be in a worse position than they imagine. Say you own an NBA team. Those are worth 5-6 billion these days, right? But what happens if NBA ratings tank? Or like in golf, a rival league with big pockets starts poaching your stars. What happens to that 5-6 billion dollar value? It doesn't just stand to lose 20%. It can start to look like an albatross. It can go to zero. It can go negative. 

It seems almost unimaginable in the case of Harvard. But if the Roman Empire collapsed...