CalPERS Global Governance Program Targets Income Inequality

Allen Matkins
Contact

The Investment Committee of CalPERS’ Board of Administration will meet next Tuesday.   The committee, which is comprised of all 13 members of the Board of Administration, is responsible for, among other things, investment strategies and policies.  On the agenda is for next week’s meeting is an update on the fund’s strategic priorities.  The slide presentation prepared for next week’s meeting identify the following three priorities:

  • Proxy Access
  • Climate Change
  • Exploration of Income Inequality

According to the slides, “exploration” consists of the CalPERS staff reading up on income inequality (or as expressed in slides, a “comprehensive review of research and analysis related to income inequality and its impact, if any, on institutional investors”).  Apparently, the staff has already started reading because the slides include this quotation from Thomas Picketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

Thomas  Picketty is a Professor of Economics at the Paris School of Economics who focuses on income inequality (the slides also include a quotation by Dr. Horace “Woody” Brock critical of Professor Picketty).

The slides suggest that another objective of this exploration is a symposium on the subject in collaboration with the University of California.

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

© Allen Matkins | Attorney Advertising

Written by:

Allen Matkins
Contact
more
less

PUBLISH YOUR CONTENT ON JD SUPRA NOW

  • Increased visibility
  • Actionable analytics
  • Ongoing guidance

Allen Matkins on:

Reporters on Deadline

"My best business intelligence, in one easy email…"

Your first step to building a free, personalized, morning email brief covering pertinent authors and topics on JD Supra:
*By using the service, you signify your acceptance of JD Supra's Privacy Policy.
Custom Email Digest
- hide
- hide