It was with an enormous sense of pride and relief that I watched the last of my kids graduate from the University of California at Berkeley. Clutching his hard fought degree in political economics in hand, Robert posed for photos among friends, with thousands of beaming parents looking on. His mother died ten years ago, and raising three kids alone, getting them through top colleges, and launching them into the world has not been easy.

There is nothing more electric than attending a ceremony like this. The commencement speaker was former Secretary of Labor and my old friend, Robert Reich, whose classes I attended myself. Some 40% of the graduates were Asian, and I spent much of the time explaining symbolism rooted in the Middle Ages to foreign parents; the robes, mantles, hoods, and swatches of ermine. A dozen unintelligible foreign languages babbled in the background.

Unfortunately, the unenviable task of moving him out of his Berkeley hovel fell to me. When I arrived, I was stunned to find nothing less than a war zone. Both sides of every street were piled with mountains of trash, the unwanted flotsam and jetsam of university life cast aside by fleeing students. Computer desks, stained mattresses, broken lava lamps, and an assortment of heavily worn Ikea furniture were there for the taking.

Next year?s sophomores and juniors were foraging en masse, looking for that reusable gem. Diminutive Chinese teenagers were seen pushing massive suitcases on wheels down the sidewalk on their way back to Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. The university attempted to bring order to the chaos by strategically placing dumpsters on every block, but they were rapidly filled to overflowing.

It was all worth it in the end because of the insight it gave me into one of my favorite, least known leading economic indicators. When I picked up the truck at U-HAUL, the lot was absolutely packed with returned vehicles, and there were more parked on both sides of the streets. The booking agent told me there is a massive influx of people moving into California from the Midwest and the Northwest, with the result being that lots all over the San Francisco Bay Area are filled to capacity.

I love this company, because in addition to providing a great service, they get the first indication of any changes to the migratory habits of Americans. The last time I saw this happen was after the dotcom bust, when thousands of technology savvy, newly unemployed pulled up stakes in the foggy city and moved to Lake Tahoe to work in ?the cloud.? Bottom line: California is enjoying a resurgence of hiring and new economic growth.

UC Berkeley is the world?s greatest public university, producing more PhD?s than any school in history, over 100,000, and also the most Nobel Prizes, at 19. By the way, anyone in the financial services industry looking to hire an ambitious young graduate from this fabulous institution of high learning, please send me an email. Robert lives in New York City now and is on the prowl for a job with a hedge fund.

I am writing to you from the poolside cabana number B-2 at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. It is an unseasonably cool 70 degrees in the shade and the air is bone- dry, so I?m on my third banana daiquiri for the day. The days when I risked getting my hands broken with a hammer for card counting at blackjack have long since passed, so I am able to relax. That?s how I had to work my way through college. May Bugsy Siegel rest in peace.

It is shocking what passes for a tattoo these days, and where they end up. I see young women with elaborate Chinese and Japanese characters inscribed in some pretty immodest locations. Reading this unfathomable language myself, I can tell you that they look like they were brushed by a two year old or are completely unintelligible. It is sad that kids are making such awful decisions these days. I predict a raging bull market in companies that make tattoo removal equipment.

I?ve never been big on regulation, having spent a lifetime in financial services, aviation, and the oil industry, the three most scrutinized industries on the planet. But really, a 400-pound woman in a bikini? There ought to be a law! Lycra should be a privilege and not a right!

I have to tell you that the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference (SALT) is the best investment event I have ever attended, bar none. Never have I seen such a concentration of great minds so willing to share with the general trading community market-bending views on all assets classes, long and short. The cost for the four day assembly is a bargain at the price, given that you will probably make all of this back, and much more, on your next trade. This is an education that can make, or break, your year.

SALT was hosted by Anthony Scaramucci, the managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, LLC. a world class networker and high profile operator in the hedge fund industry. Scaramucci is the author of two books, The Little Book of Hedge Funds: What You Need to Know About Hedge Funds but the Managers Won?t Tell You, and Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul.

SkyBridge Capital II, LLC (?SkyBridge?) is a research driven alternative investment firm with approximately $7.6 billion in total assets under advisement or management. Talk about eating your own cooking!

The firm offers hedge fund investing solutions that address a wide range of market participants from individual retail investors to large institutions. Their businesses include commingled funds of hedge fund products, customized separate account portfolios and hedge fund advisory services. To learn more about their services, please visit their website http://www.skybridgecapital.com.

Unfortunately, there was a total press blackout on the marquee names, and the intelligence provided was for ears only. You can?t blame these guys for being gun shy. All have been grievously misquoted by the press in the past. This can be a dicey problem when their comments are market moving and they already own big positions. Given the choice between a restrained, politically correct views approved by compliance departments, and the real, but unquotable, skinny, I?ll definitely take the later.

Non-stop panel discussions kept us all up to date on the many urgent issues facing hedge funds and their investors today. Fee discounts for size, once unheard of, are now becoming common. There is a rise in the customization of accounts for specific clients. Risk control and transparency have improved dramatically since the 2008 crash. Concerns about the popping of the bond market bubble were almost universal.

Peripheral to the large conference halls were two vast meeting rooms, one with 100 tables, another with 50 white upholstered sofas. There, an army of young, fresh faced marketing reps sold a panoply of hedge fund products to a flotilla of hardened and wizened end investors. Reading the body language was fascinating. Some small hedge fund managers articulated their own strategies to potential partners. Every 30 minutes, the buyers of services rotated tables. You could almost feel the energy of the deals getting done and commerce coursing through the air. God bless America!

Whenever an empty seat appeared between appointments, I seized it and asked the marketers to give me their pitch. I collected about two dozen. All I can say is the variety of specialized products and services offered by the hedge fund industry today is breathtaking, as is the professionalism of the ever younger participants. There are now 22 major hedge fund strategy descriptions, some with another half dozen subdivisions. You need a PhD in math from MIT to understand some of them. You can now outsource any service to third party providers.

At night, the guests were treated to a blowout party around the Bellagio?s ornate swimming pool complex. A Latin band boomed out the music, and the torsos of dancers gyrated wildly in true bacchanalian fashion. Comely waitresses served all the iced tequila shots you could drink. The hotel wisely stationed lifeguards around the pools in case a drunken reveler fell, or was thrown in. It was all a scene worthy of The Great Gatsby.

Because I recently started posting my pictures on the site, I was mobbed by fans, dispensing some 200 business cards that evening. Why do I feel like the protagonist, Nick Carraway? Or am I Jay Gatsby himself?

When I first jumped into the industry 30 years ago, there were only two dozen hedge funds managing a miniscule amount of money, and we all knew each other. Most of Wall Street thought we were all crooks. Now you have 10,000 funds managing $2.5 trillion, accounting for 50%-70% of all trading volume. Pension funds have made the industry respectable, and huge.

Asian readers still have the opportunity to sign up for the Singapore SALT Conference to be held on September 24-27, 2013 (click here for the link). After that, you will have to wait for the Las Vegas conference in May, 2014.

Oh, did I tell you how hard it is to get your clothes off when they are soaking wet? My dry cleaner is going to hate me.

My Never Ending Search for Investment Tips

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No one can explain the most complex economic and monetary issues in a simpler, more homespun fashion than former governor of the Federal Reserve, Bob McTeer. He is known for carrying around two yardsticks, one slightly longer than the other, to demonstrate to your average guy the monthly changes in employment.

Bob argues that the Fed is getting a bad rap today. Ben Bernanke?s quantitative easing is neither inflationary, nor causing the collapse of the dollar. This ?money printing effort? is not actually printing any money. The $1.7 trillion QE1 was designed to buy mortgage backed securities to bring liquidity back to the market place. QE2 enabled the purchase of a further $600 billion in Treasury securities to prevent a double dip recession. On top of this, the Treasury piled the $700 billion TARP to recapitalize the major banks. Then came QE3. All four of these programs were wildly successful.

As a result, the Fed balance sheet has grown from a pre-crash $800 billion to $3.5 trillion. Normally this would be inflationary, but it is not this time, as all of the extra money is being tied up with excess reserves at the banks. The proof of this is that the money supply, M2, is growing at a very modest 5%, barely enough to accommodate the population growth. Without the Fed programs the monetary base would have fallen off a cliff.

The challenge going forward is for the Fed to unwind its balance sheet at the same rate that the banks start paring back excess reserve through more aggressive lending. Too slow, and the Fed risks inflation. Too fast, and it risks falling back into recession.

Although it appears that the dollar is in a free fall in the foreign exchange markets, it is in fact at the same level as it was before the financial crisis. All it has really done is given back its flight to safety bid. The dollar is really a function of our international balance of payments and global interest rate differentials. Bob feels that the next big move in the greenback is down.

McTeer points out that the Fed has been a huge cash cow for the Treasury, and ultimately, the taxpayer. QE1 and QE2 took in $120 billion in profits over the last two years. The TARP funds paid a 5% preferred dividend and brought in tens of billions of dollars in profits from the banks, General Motors, and AIG.

Bob views Obama?s $900 billion stimulus package as ?an attempt to shoot a hog with a shotgun.? The big problem is that businesses view such programs as temporary and act accordingly. Permanent changes to government policies get you more bang for the buck.

Bob, 72, was probably one of the last people in Texas to use a functioning outhouse. He grew up in rural Ranger, Georgia, the son of a truck stop operator, and his first brush with the real economy was pumping gas and picking cotton. Somehow, he scored an economics degree from the University of Georgia, and went on to work at the Federal Reserve. He was named president of the Dallas Fed in 1991, and went on to pioneer the analysis of the impact of technology on the macro economy. Bob is simple, but he is no lightweight. He served as a chancellor of Texas A&M University, with 100,000 students. Today, he serves asa Dirctor of Beal Bank (Plano) and Beal Bank USA.