Obama crew going after pension fund cash!
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is trying to encourage public retirement funds that control more than $2 trillion to buy all or part of failed lenders, taking a more direct role in propping up the banking system…
Direct investments may allow funds such as those in Oregon, New Jersey and California to cut fees for private-equity managers, and the agency to get better prices for distressed assets, the people said. They declined to be identified because talks with regulators are confidential…
Oregon’s retirement fund may contribute $100 million as regulators seek “the support of state pension funds to solve the crisis surrounding ongoing bank failures”… New Jersey’s fund may also participate…
The FDIC shuttered 140 lenders last year and expects the tally may be higher in 2010… Pension funds, whose 100 largest members manage $2.4 trillion, could provide capital to acquire deposits and outstanding loans from collapsed banks…
Investing in distressed banks doesn’t always pay off, as the U.S. Treasury Department learned with the Troubled Asset Relief Program. At least 60 lenders skipped some of their promised dividends to the TARP fund…
…The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, said in a Feb. 16 presentation that one of its goals is to increase its “co-investments” in transactions alongside money managers…
Known as Calpers, the pension fund plans to “explore unique structures with select general partners”…" (Emphasis added.)
“Failed Banks May Get Pension-Fund Backing as FDIC Seeks Cash”
Dakin Campbell, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 3/8/10
“Alfredo Ley, founder of Ley Investor B.V., an investment management and research firm in the Netherlands, yesterday published a fascinating review of a 1989 academic paper written by the great rationalizer of surreptitious government intervention in the gold market, former Harvard professor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, now director of President Obama's National Economic Council…
Ley's review of that paper, headlined "From the Horse's Mouth: Lawrence Summers on Market Manipulation in Times of Crisis," construes the paper as an argument for government to respond to financial crises by propping up asset prices and rigging currency exchange rates, presumably also largely surreptitiously…”
“More advocacy by Obama's top economist for sneaky market rigging”
The GATA Dispatch, 3/27/10
