A very odd barhopping experience: Recon.

Like 8 days ago after a work function in downtown, I hit up some upscale restaurant and hotel bars to have a quiet beer and do some reading for class prep, and ended up at the lobby bar in one of the big luxury hotels in that part of town.

Oddly, the bar was hopping, and I found out it was b/c of some investment conference coordinated by a business magazine that connects capital and capital managers, including to university investments.

So, since I had on nice slacks and a snazzy shirt and tie with a black sweater and had just gotten a haircut a few days earlier, I began mingling and asking how a donor might make money off a university.

The first (young) (white) (female) (Jewish?) magazine editor got suspicious of my direct line of questioning and my saying I had written financial exposes, so I changed my story when I met people and began saying that I had a friend who had done well in i-banking and had given a few million to a university, but wanted to get access to the endowment money.

The next guy I spoke to was brusque and said that that wasn't good, but I pushed through and said that it wasn't anything wrong since my friend wasn't going to hook up the endowment with crappy investments that'd f*ck the university, but rather the $ had to be invested somewhere, so why not help out your friends if they could provide the same opportunities.

"Those days are gone," he was like, and he then explained that "too many eyes are watching."

Later, another guy said that really, those kinds of connections are how "investment is done since someone knows someone", but even then, that "that really doesn't happen anymore," and he again said that "too many eyes are watching."

I pressed him, and he admitted that the eyes watching were only board-internally.

So, I identified the place as my university, and said my friend was pissed since they were giving contracts to 2 particular companies but he had seen nothing.

He then asked me how much $ my friend had given, and I said like $6-7 mill, def. under $10 mill, and he said that that was probably not enough for that, he'd have to give at least $20 mill in his guess before he could call in any favors.

I also told a British fund manager some of the #s from my university (debt, admin payraises, announced building and financial aid initiatives), and he just whistled and shook his head and said the #s were whack.