Roger Lowenstein on hedge funds

Seeking Alpha and MoneyScience.org point out a great article on Hedge Funds by Roger Lowenstein (yes, the author of When Genius Fails etc).
Very interesting....I would comment on it, but seeking Alpha already has so I will link to those comments:
Seeking Alpha: Roger Lowenstein on hedge funds

a quick quote:
"It's a good time to be a financial-disaster writer. Disasters abound, and even when they don't, people are eager for your opinion on when the next bubble is going to pop. Scarcely a day goes by without a warning of some dire calamity -- in the dollar, in housing values, in pension funds. The way people crave financial info, we must be the best-informed, most economically literate society ever"

"Almost by definition, the spark for such calamities is unforeseeable. This explains our vigilance. What is less appreciated is that excessive, or inappropriate, vigilance also exacts a price. It does so in several ways. People who insulate their portfolios against phantom risks pay a toll, just as they paid to protect their computers against Y2K."

Read the full article from the New York Times