Comments on: Take on the News: The Pension Fund Land Bust

By: joey45

joey45 — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:43:57 +0000

We needed this piece of information, Brian. Well thought out, researched, and to the point. Maybe, given the number and type of investors (retirement funds), that what we really need is some regulation against spin doctors, who, in my opinion, are the ultimate cause of this sort of debacle. Of course it is also true that up until just recently, our government has been spinning a bit more than was warranted, too. Save us all from spin doctors, and glass-half-full people. What we need is a realistic viewpoint. Forget whether the glass is half-empty, or half-full; the really important information is which direction the ‘water’ is headed, and why! Glad to have you on the Fox team…I’m soooo tired of bulls running the full-filt boogy!

By: W.C. Varones

W.C. Varones — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:08:12 +0000

And shortly after they made their LandSource investment, they jumped into toxic waste CDOs.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:10:56 +0000

“The real estate bubble began to burst just weeks afterward”

Actually, it was already burst months beforehand. On the ground here in LA we lauded Stuart Miller’s laying off of that much risk on new blood as one of the best fleecings ever. It was obviously a bad move that was promoted by investment managers just looking for fees and not really caring about the health of CalPERS.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:27:36 +0000

Maybe, Brian, you should also have offered what the rate of return CALPERS has provided over the last five to ten years. You yourself offer that the investment was a small fraction of the assets under investment; it’s the total return that is really the key for any pension beneficiary.

Quoting a large number like a billion dollars is, of course, great fun, but the real focus should be performance in the aggregate. Picking out a particular investment is just annecdotal evidence, and should be weighed as such.