Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Why have California's pension funds fallen so far short of their projected returns? Part of it is that they base investment decisions on their political beliefs.



The day he was sworn in to the California Assembly, freshman Bay Area Democrat Ash Kalra filed his first piece of legislation: Assembly Bill 20, which would force the state’s two largest public employee retirement funds, CalSTRS and CalPERS, to divest from companies involved in building the disputed Dakota Access pipeline.

The bill, if it were to become law (and it shouldn’t), wouldn’t stop the project from being completed. The Army Corps of Engineers has already given final approval to the remaining section of the pipeline. It would, however, blow a multibillion-dollar hole in the pension funds — and the public pocketbook, because state and local taxpayers would be left to fill that hole....