Peter Thiel: Actually, I think the role’s been somewhat less than people have said. It’s, people have been focused and obsessed with the hedge fund industry for a number of years and the reality is that the problem turned out to be the investment banks, which were hedge funds in disguise. It turned out to be the retail banks, the subprime lenders, maybe even the insurance companies.  The AIG blowup was something that came very much out of left field, and more generally it turned out to be extremely excessive leverage which most hedge funds actually were not excessively leveraged.

Recorded: October 23, 2008