Posted by Jon Fleischman at 12:00 am on Apr 01, 2008 Comments Off on Torrico’s AB 1967 Is Xenophobic, And Extremely Poor Fiscal Policy
What would you say if I told you that in the state’s current
fiscal climate Assemblyman Albert Torrico (D-Newark) is carrying a
bill, AB 1967 (see link to .pdf
below) that if passed, would cost our state retirement funds
(both Cal-STRS and Cal-PERS) billions of dollars?
AB 1967, in essence, puts some pretty huge prohibitions on where
the billions of dollars in these retirement funds can be
invested. Of course, right now, these funds are invested
(presumably) to maximize rate of return. But under Torrico’s
bill, these public funds who have to immediately and forever divest
from any investments with what are called Sovereign
Wealth Funds, which to put it simply are those funds that are
affiliated with foreign countries. Torrico’s bill does exempt
any SWF’s affiliated with a country (or countries) that have signed
onto a bevy of various international human rights accords. Oh
yeah, the United States, were it considered a foreign country under
Torrico’s bill, would not meet the criteria as we have not… Read More