THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020 23
a depression if the White House didn’t
take drastic measures. Hotel chains would
go out of business; Hilton’s stock would
go to zero. The Fokkers, watching from
their home trading stations, mocked him:
“Now Ackman is in tears.”
“He sounds unhinged.”
“Irresponsible.... Wanker.”
“In an industry of cocks, he’s one of
the great ones.”
Like the Australian, Ackman advo-
cated a shutdown of the global economy.
And, like the Australian, he had profited
from his pessimism. A week after his ap-
pearance on CNBC, his firm, Pershing
Square Capital Management, announced
that it had netted $2.6 billion (on an in-
vestment of just twenty-seven million
dollars) on bearish credit bets, which
paid off if certain bundles of loans de-
clined in value. This news enraged the
Fokkers; they felt that he’d been scaring
people, for money. (They were more com-
fortable with those who would reassure
people, for money.) But, by then, Ack-
man told me, he’d plowed most of his
proceeds back into the stock market.
“Our hedge had already paid off prior
to my going on CNBC,” he said.
Since last year, I’ve been receiving
daily mass e-mails from a retired hedge-
fund manager named Whitney Tilson.
We’d met walking our dogs in the Park,
back when talking to strangers was a
thing. We chatted about mountain climb-
ing and an attempt he’d made to become
a contestant on “Survivor.” He added me
to his list. Most of his e-mails recounted
his exploits and his travels as an outdoor
enthusiast—fitness advice and selfies of
him climbing and hiking and skiing and
running triathlons and doing Tough
Mudders. Advertisements for his invest-
ment newsletter began sprouting up on
some of my favorite Web sites.
Tilson is a close friend of Ackman’s,
from their days as undergraduates at
Harvard, in the late eighties, when they
sold ads for the “Let’s Go” travel guides.
On March 27th, Tilson declared in his
newsletter that Ackman had “just made
the greatest trade of all time.” He was a
little envious. “Was it really so hard to
see on February 19, only 37 days ago,
when the S&P hit an all-time high and
credit spreads were close to all-time lows,
that the coronavirus might be a big prob-
lem?” he wondered.
Yet, on March 9th, when it was even
less hard to see that the coronavirus might
be a problem, the subject line of Tilson’s
daily e-mail had read, “I think the cur-
rent panic over the coronavirus is one of
the most irrational things I’ve ever seen.”
He wrote, “Many times throughout my
career, when such irrationality has man-
ifested itself in financial markets, lead-
ing to big sell-offs, I’ve taken advan-
tage—and made tens of millions of
dollars for my investors.” He noted that
he was writing a book called “All I Want
to Know Is Where I’m Going to Die:
The Five Calamities That Can Destroy
Your Life and How to Avoid Them.” A
pandemic was not one of the five.
Tilson wrote that, except for the el-
derly with additional health problems,
“I can find no evidence that the risk of
serious illness or death from the coro-navirus for the overwhelming majority
of Americans is anything but infinites-
imal—like one in million.” He went on,
“Therefore, unless new, contradictory
evidence emerges, I think that the vast
majority of Americans can safely go
about their lives as usual. That’s exactly
what my family and I are doing. I took
three flights last week to Tampa, Chi-
cago, and Jackson, WY. Susan and Kath-
arine flew to London last Thursday and
returned yesterday evening. They re-
ported that everything there was com-
pletely normal. (Gotta love the stoic
Brits—keep calm and carry on!) Emily
flew from Newark to join me in Jack-
son today. I rode a dozen times on a
gondola today with strangers (as Emily
and I will be doing every day this week).”
Putting aside the fact that luxury ski