Our scene opens: Obama is sitting behind his desk with a box of tissues. “Why don’t they listen!! Sobbb...sniff...sobbb.”

About five months ago, I was invited to Manhattan for a recruitment weekend at a well-respected New York City hedge fund. Sadly, I had no idea what a hedge fund actually does, so I turned to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia told me that hedge funds are investment funds that “hedge” against market fluctuation by engaging in a variety of fiduciary tactics, most notably short-selling. Short-selling, it seems, is a technique whereby investors borrow stock from a lender and sell it on the open market, with the expectation that the stock price will go down. Short-sellers can then repurchase the stock for the lower price, return it to the lender and pocket the difference.

In the midst of the country’s economic recession, the Johnson Graduate School of Management’s Cayuga Fund, a hedge fund run by faculty and students, reported a 0.42 percent gain for the 2008 business year.

Although the fund’s investments decreased by 1.29 percent in the fourth quarter, this $12 million hedge fund, finished the year ahead, especially relative to the performance of its benchmarks. Indexes like Hedge Fund Research Equity Hedge Index and the Hedge Fund Research Equity Market Neutral Index reported 25.45 percent and 1.16 percent losses, respectively, in 2008.Cayuga MBA Fund Returns