No hedge

James Surowiecki has a good primer on why nothing worked to counter the flurry of selling in the markets. Here’s the key part of his argument, but do read the whole thing:

“Rating agencies and Wall Street analysts are always with us. But the most destructive procyclical force in today’s market is relatively new—hedge funds. There’s an irony here: hedge funds have been touted as a great countercyclical force. Because hedge-fund investors, unlike mutual-fund investors, usually can’t pull their money out on a daily basis, the funds were supposed to be able to take a longer-term view and pursue contrarian strategies (like the hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s huge bets against the subprime bubble). Because they can follow myriad investment strategies—selling short as well as going long, trading derivatives, and so on—they were supposed to add diversity to the market. And the growing influence of hedge funds did indeed coincide with a decline in market volatility.