Unintended Consequences

Several of my “polls” highlight the fact that many of the largest companies (Wal*mart and  GE come to mind)  in the United States are already  largely owned by State Employee/Teacher Pension funds and the prepaid tuition plans where you prepay a State run fund for your children’s college tuition.

For the most part, as long as they’re making money, the state run funds have kept away from telling the companies what to do (at least publicly).  That became more visible today.

According to this Bloomberg Story, the Treasurer of the State of Connecticut (which owns 3 million shares and has lost $47 million) is publicly calling for the resignation of the CEO of Bank of America.    Is this in part a political act or just a politician trying to shift blame away from his own decisions?

From time to time, the topic of the “Social Security” Lock Box comes up, and that we should instead invest money in buying stocks in American companies. 

The Republican proposals generally are along the line of the 401(k) plans,where you could take a portion of the social security taxes and invest them in mutual funds.  

The Democrats usually think in terms of having the Social Security administration invest a portion of the income stream in stocks, the same way the State Employee/Teacher pension funds do – which is defacto nationalization of U.S. business. 

It’s going to become really important to understand the difference.