If you think that the past 12 months have had any impact on the "2/20" hedge fund pricing model, please say hi to the Easter Bunny for me.

According to Bloomberg News, reductions from the 2% fee based on assets under management and 20% of investment gains aren't coming anytime soon. Further, the hedge fund community will only trade money for other advantages -- such as longer lockup periods and high minimum commitments (e.g., of at least $100 million).

And, it's worse if the fund is a top performer. After all, why change if you're making money? It seems that there's nothing quite like results for shutting up limited partners.

This one of those stories too juicy not to do a post on. An exclusive piece from Bloomberg discusses Fairfax Financial Holdings' (NYSE: FFH) allegations of a vast conspiracy of short-selling hedge funds determined to bring the company down. The company sued eight hedge funds for racketeering in 2006, and has alleged that a group of well-known short sellers -- James Chanos, Steven Cohen, Daniel Loeb, David Rocker, and Adam Sender -- have gone so far as to send an anonymous letter to a minister at a church attended by a member of Fairfax's management, asking him to make sure that executive Prem Watsa makes a "full confession".

Fairfax has done its best Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) impersonation in more ways than one. In addition to conspiracy theories, we also have accounting scandals and fundamentals concerns. In June 2005, Fairfax disclosed that the SEC had requested information on the company's use of reinsurance products. As of early August, the investigation was still ongoing.

Allegations flying back and forth also include Harry Potter and sadomasochistic orgies. You couldn't make this stuff up. This should be a pretty exciting story to follow.

Hedge fund managers, most notably Steven Cohen (SAC Capital) and Ken Griffin (Citadel Investment Group), have become notorious buyers of expensive and trendy contemporary art. It would make sense, then, that the recent poor performance from many mighty hedge funds would have an effect on art prices because hedge fund managers stand to make less money (or perhaps even, gasp, lose money).

According to a recent Bloomberg article, "the art market will soften...but it may not happen for six months to a year." However, the article also quotes a Moody's analyst who testified that "we've seen record levels of consigning,..and lots of deals are being done." But I tend to agree with the first source -- the art market will inevitably soften as hedge fund managers have less disposable income to invest in their art collections.

This piece, like many others pieces of news, proves the 'domino effect' is unbelievably at-present in the world. News of poor earnings from an American company can effect foreign markets, credit issues in America have created a worldwide sell-off during the last month, increased volatility has hurt many large hedge funds, etc. As I've said before, "gone are the days when simple cause-and-effect can be used to analyze a news event."