Marketwatch – Phillip Goldstein warned the other day that the speech he was about to give to a bunch of hedge fund industry lawyers might be offensive. It was, and he made no apologies.
All of the attention Goldstein has received in the last few months hasn’t changed his style.
The man who took on and overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule requiring hedge fund registration is as outspoken as ever, in fact he may even be more so.
“I don’t need to pay anybody to tell me right from wrong,” he said to a smattering of awkward laughter.
Principal of Bulldog Investors, Goldstein is a child of the 60s. He remembers and embraces the T-shirt wisdom of that era that said “question authority.” His addendum, if not something he acknowledges, seems to say “and raise a lot of hell.” He counts civil rights icon Rosa Parks among his heroes.
“I don’t think people should just accept things,” he told me. “When something’s wrong, it’s wrong…There’s a lot of rules on the books that are just plain wrong.”
Goldstein, 61, is not of the flower power variety. He is a registered Republican and considers himself a Libertarian who “votes for anyone advocating a free market.” He is more an iconoclast railing against government censors, fraudulent hedge fund managers corporate boards and the attorneys that represent them.
