Call it corporate capital, as opposed to venture capital, it's the way smart technology goliaths are covering their bets by betting on today's upstarts.
Who is covering these bets?
They were covering their bets.
A rally on Friday, spurred by bargain hunters and short-sellers covering their bets on lower prices, was not enough to overcome the losses earlier in the week.
Not only has the alternative-asset giant been covering its bets against subprime, according to its president, Hamilton E. James, but it has been actively seeking to buy these assets.
New York's singers, actors, literary lights and plutocrats wrote checks across party lines, in some cases covering their bets by running the table of candidates.
But the Modern, covering all bets, also initiated buses that depart from its West 53rd Street location every hour on the hour on weekends.
"People feel that they are covering their bets better by getting a broader business degree," said Jane Rubin, an accreditation specialist at the International Association for Management Education.
The casinos are covering their bets by looking for slot licenses in Pennsylvania, but New Jersey officials worry that the state has no replacement revenue for the money it gets from Atlantic City.
With the party cheerleading the market's inexorable rise, it became even easier to imagine that the government was, in effect, declaring an informal debt obligation on the stock market's future – essentially covering any bets with its own considerable assets.
