By DIYA GULLAPALLI
March 21, 2008; Page C1

Mr. Miller was speaking at a conference titled "Credit Cycle-What's Next?" in the auditorium of Deutsche Bank in New York. During a 40-minute session, Mr. Miller along with other experts spoke to more than 200 top-tier Deutsche Bank clients about the markets. In particular, he talked at length about why this is a great time to buy financial stocks -- including Bear Stearns Cos.

After the presentation, an audience member raised his hand and asked Mr. Miller if he was aware that Bear was collapsing and its stock was down 15% that morning. Mr. Miller looked shocked, according to observers.

Such shock is continuing as the near death of Bear has helped wreck results for him and other value managers this year. Mr. Miller's Legg Mason Value Trust mutual fund is one of the biggest investors in Bear, with more than $200 million in the firm through last year. Despite a run-up in the stock in recent days, the stake was valued at less than $15 million by Thursday's close...."It appears to be the case that the Fed wanted Bear to fail," Mr. Miller says. He is miffed that the Fed didn't make a $200 billion credit facility available to investment banks until it was too late for Bear. Mr. Miller says the Fed action penalizes long-term value investors like himself who bought the stock last year while creditors "who loaned them all the money" to make bad bets "get bailed out," he says.

Amid the volatile times for stocks and mutual funds, Mr. Miller says he recently looked to other top investors' track records for insights. He observed that while famed fund investor John Templeton was "never No. 1," he was "sometimes the exact worst," and yet was a top performer over a 30-year period.

- lol. to compare yourself to john templeton says all you need to know. and as far as the "credit-cycle - what's next." i will tell you what is next. the unwinding of leverage has extensive collateral damage for people who buy things blindly. and more so for the leveraged boobs. speculators once idolized in the mutual and hedge fund world are slowly getting smoked out and will fade into oblivion. miller's bad invstmnts will continue to implode and he will make more excuses and whine until there is a mass exodus in their fund complex and he will be forced to retire to pursue other interests and the bank will call in the margin loans on the yachts as they can not rent them out enough to afford them. ignore the pomp it is no different than when local ford dealer repos the f250 extra cab.

....imagine if you were so smart and so rich that you could buy a ridiculously large yacht to sail with your family and crew around the world. common folk might see you from the shore and you might smugly smile at them and think "i bet they wish they were as fortunate and blessed as i."

but also imagine that you knew deep in your own heart that you had come to earn your fortune on the backs of hundreds of thousands who had paid for your wealth every day by your sucking of small amounts of their net worth in the form of your asset mngt fees.

imagine the thoughts racing in your head before you retired to cabin #5 every night - you would awaken in a cold sweat fearing you would lose your yacht and that the company you bought using lmvtx's shareholders' money was worth $100 a share had plunged again yet lower like your enron or bear stearns or countrywide or pulte or the many others did. time after time they just kept getting killed and you look in the bathroom mirror at yourself at 3am and see you are much older then ever and the world sees right through you.

that would suck. living in a utopia/dystopia juxtoposition can be torture...i am sure wei wu wei thinks to himself that the peasants on the shore do not have a clue how bad it really is for him. ah but we do my man, do we ever.