Sorry for the slow posting as of late. I was busy there for a while. You should know by now, if you read this blog, it’s always better toward the end of the week.
Anyway, a couple of notes:
- Dan McAllister, treasurer-tax collector for the county of San Diego, faxed over a letter he sent to the county’s pension administrator. It puts in writing his concerns about the retirement fund’s investments in hedge funds like Amaranth.
Our recent experience has demonstrated that we should be very concerned with the large percentage of our portfolio dedicated to hedge fund investments, as well as the extreme volatility and risk factors associated with hedge fund investing.
McAllister asked that the county pension system review investments like this sometime before its planned workshop on the issue Oct. 19. It doesn’t look like they’ll be dealin with it this week by the looks of the agenda.
- Look closely at the agenda and you’ll see they do actually plan on discussing something in closed session: “Initiation of Litigation … Number of potential cases – 2 or more.” I wonder who the retirement system is thinking of suing …
- (Warning: Shameless self-promotion coming up) KPBS has an excellent new website if you haven’t seen it yet. And they have made their old shows much easier to find. Here’s a link to me talking about the county and its hedge fund investments if you didn’t get a chance to see it on television last week. Again, kudos to KPBS for drawing up an easy to use and look at website. I really do understand how hard that is to do.