New York Times has difficulty with private equity

I don't get it.  The article says that private equity portfolios are being sold at between 29.3 cents on the dollar and 51.58 cents on the dollar, measured at net asset value.  I believe some discount so I would accept these numbers and trust the article. 

Except for the baffling sentence two paragraphs later:  "But what happens if Stanford is able to sell its stake at only 50 cents on the dollar, for example, when K.K.R. is listing it at 80 cents? If other endowments hold similar stakes, what happens to their value?"

Huh?  Isn't KKR's listed stake the net asset value?  Perhaps the article means 29.3 cents on the invested capital?  But who in their right mind is applying a discount off of entry price rather than their judgment of current value?  What is this "dollar" referring to?  In the KKR context, I think it is of invested capital.  In Stanford's case, I think off of KKR's reported value (which is lower than entry value).  But, of course, I have no idea because the article is sloppy.

Notwithstanding private equity's larger mindshare and increased column inches, the press still has a long way to go before it understands even the basics, I think.

PE Secondaries

Have been thinking about PE secondary sales (Harvard, UVA, etc.). And have a thought - assuming PE returns are largely a function of vintage, and assuming now is the right time to begin putting money to work, could it be that the sellers are actually not exiting PE but rather freeing up capital to invest at the right time? For a public stock, future beliefs about the industry or asset class determine whether to hold or sell a position, regardless of prior losses. For PE limited partnership interests, different years and funds are not fungible and so investors need to make a new purchase to get exposure (can't simply hold on to old investments and ride out the volatility). So, although there may be some increase in value for 2006 vintage funds, better to get in the 2009-10 funds even at the cost of writing off a large part of the value of recent investments. Just a thought.