Free Republic

Last year California's leaders made the absurd decision to float bonds to pay for obiligated payments into the state pension fund. Yes, borrowing to pay operating costs--in this case for pension investments. Kinda like using your credit card to pay for buying stocks. This stupidity is widespread at the state and local level in recent years. Today the Pacific Legal Foundation announced the courts invalidated the bonds because the state consitution requires a public vote for large bond issues, and Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to skirt around that. The court did not call bullshit on the idea of pension bonds themselves--not...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has once again demonstrated how dishonest and hypocritical he is by his appearance at the recent Topanga fires here in Southern California. How could Schwarzenegger in good conscience force a group of firefighters to stand behind him in mock support while he simultaneously attacks firefighters' pensions, benefits and livelihoods? This act is the epitome of insult. His conduct in this case is particularly reprehensible considering that he recently rejected almost all of the recommendations put forward by a Fire Service Blue Ribbon Committee, a committee he commissioned, that was intended to improve public safety during urban interface...

Nine seek seats on CalPERS board http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/13651572p-14493894c.html (EXCERPT) Nine candidates, including two incumbents, are vying for a pair of at-large seats on the 13-member governing board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the nation's largest public pension fund. The open seats are for four-year terms starting in mid-January. Overall, six of the 13 trustees are elected by members. The governor appoints two representatives. The Assembly speaker and Senate Rules Committee jointly name one trustee, and the state Personnel Board selects one. The state treasurer, controller and director of the Department of Personnel Administration also serve on the board overseeing...

One financial expert describes it as one of the most stunning transfers of wealth in human history, from the pockets of taxpayers to the pockets of government employees. What will it take to awaken the victims? What's happening is that extravagant increases in pensions and other compensation of state and local government employees threaten to cause a wave of bankruptcies, tax increases and cutbacks in services. An analysis by the L.A. Daily News this week showed that California's largest public agencies face an increase of $108 billion in pension costs compared to just three years ago. According to the Legislative...

In a surprise move, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown has resigned from the board of the influential California Public Employees' Retirement System. The departure caught leaders at the nation's largest public pension fund off guard, leaving them with no explanation for the unexpected decision. Brown's replacement, Kings County Supervisor and farmer Tony Oliveira, was quickly sworn in Monday morning. "Nothing the mayor has ever done surprises anyone. You always took everything he did as being something that was just his style," CalPERS board President Rob Feckner said Monday. The exit came just before the board was to consider...

SINGAPORE – CalPERS, the biggest U.S. pension fund, is considering property investment in China, a country where its own corporate governance and human rights rules prevent it from investing in stocks. The California Public Employees' Retirement System, which has $183 billion in equity, has only $1.2 billion invested in property outside the United States. But sensing a peak in the U.S. property market, CalPERS is paring down the U.S. portion of its $22 billion property portfolio by at least $7.5 billion, according to Michael McCook, its senior real estate investment officer. Meanwhile, it aims to raise its foreign property assets...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have dropped his original plan to overhaul state and local government pension systems, but he continues to warn of a potential San Diego-style meltdown of the state pension funds. The governor said this week that if he can't push a pension overhaul through the Legislature, he will place an initiative on the ballot next June. "We will continue with that, because we have to have pension reform," Schwarzenegger said Monday on a Sacramento radio talk show. "It has a potential of bankrupting the state, as you can see what happens in San Diego –...

SACRAMENTO — A coalition of media companies and government watchdog groups, reacting to rumors of losses at some big hedge funds, are clamoring to get two of California's biggest public pension funds to disclose more details of their holdings in exotic investments. The California First Amendment Coalition on Tuesday filed requests under the state public records law with the $182-billion California Public Employees' Retirement System and the $63-billion University of California pension and endowment fund, seeking information about debt levels at the hedge funds they invest in. They also ask for data on management fees and types of hedge funds...

SACRAMENTO - California's capital is packed with more than 1,000 lobbyists, but when people want to make something happen in Sacramento, they often turn instead to Bob White, a genial Republican maestro who helped elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. White has an advantage lobbyists don't. While registered influence peddlers must reveal whom they work for, White calls himself a strategist who doesn't directly push for changes in state policy. That legal distinction allows White to conceal who his corporate clients are, even though he and members of his consulting firm, California Strategies, go to bat for them by exploiting a loophole...

SACRAMENTO - After pressuring Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to drop his proposal to overhaul public employee pensions, some union representatives have already abandoned negotiations for a new plan, administration officials said Wednesday. The governor had hoped to put a proposal before voters to change the public employee retirement system, whose costs have grown from $160 million to $2.6 billion over the past five years. But he scrapped the plan after public safety unions complained that it did not explicitly preserve death and disability benefits for fallen police officers and firefighters. But on April 19, union representatives participating in the talks for...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Seeking to regain momentum, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took his reform agenda on the road Monday, leaving any mention of last week's retreat on his plan to fix the state's pension system behind in the capital. His remarks in San Diego contrasted with Thursday's announcement from Schwarzenegger that he would delay his proposed ballot initiative to privatize much of California's public pension system from November until June 2006. The governor said "misconceptions" by firefighters and police officers that they could lose death and disability benefits had overwhelmed the issue. On Monday, Schwarzenegger spoke before 400 employees at...

Under pressure from firefighters and police officers, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday backed off, for now, his plan to privatize California's public employee pension system. The Republican said "misconceptions" among firefighters and police officers that privatization would strip them of death and disability benefits had come to dominate the issue. Over the past few weeks, Schwarzenegger has waged a campaign to put privatization on the ballot during a special election next fall. But on Thursday, he said he would wait until the June 2006 election if lawmakers did not craft a compromise measure in the coming months. "Let's pull it...

SACRAMENTO - In a major reversal, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today withdrew his support of a pension reform initiative that ignited stiff opposition from police officers and firefighters concerned about losing death benefits. At a morning press conference, the Republican governor said he would focus on crafting legislation palatable to public safety employees and their unions. Also, Schwarzenegger said he will rewrite the measure, aiming for the June 2006 ballot if he cannot forge a legislative compromise. ``There should be no doubt they will be protected,'' the governor said of police and firefighters. Dropping his current proposal ``will spark a whole...

California's largest public pension plans want investors to think green - as in money and the environment. And they want deep-pocket investors to think beyond feel-good investments such as power-generating solar and wind farms - to wireless sensors to monitor power usage in supermarkets, or to home water-treatment systems. Investors can make money by mining opportunities in emerging clean technology ventures, say officials at the influential California Public Employees' Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System. Or, they say, they can eventually lose money by ignoring the future financial risks of greenhouse gas emissions. "We're trying to look at...

A key panel of the California Public Employees' Retirement System endorsed a plan Tuesday to reduce wild swings in government contributions, following calls for a pension overhaul by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other critics. Under the plan, CalPERS would revamp a formula used to calculate annual pension contribution rates for the state, cities and other government agencies. It would also spread investment gains and losses over a 15-year period instead of three years, as it does now. At the same time, trustees agreed to explore legislation to create reserve accounts that government officials can tap to meet their pension payments...

SACRAMENTO - The day after Arnold Schwarzenegger launched an initiative drive to remake public pensions, a prominent ally of President George Bush attacked the plan and pleaded with the GOP governor to pursue an alternative. Forcing new public employees to move to a 401(k)-style pension system -- in which they would invest their own money and assume the risk of playing the stock market -- would hurt the University of California's ability to attract top talent, said Gerald Parsky, chairman of UC's Board of Regents. The proposal is one of three ``reforms'' that Schwarzenegger said Tuesday he wants to take...

Schwarzenegger is willing to bend on his proposal to shift state workers to private accounts. Democrats are drafting their own fixes. The Schwarzenegger administration is backing away from its demand that the state employees' pension system be replaced with private retirement accounts. Finance Director Tom Campbell said Wednesday at a legislative hearing that the governor is open to changing the pension system in other ways, provided there are savings for taxpayers and predictable costs for the state. His comments come as the governor travels the state collecting signatures for a possible ballot initiative that would move government workers hired in...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - One day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced plans to push his pension overhaul campaign to the ballot later this year, an Assembly hearing into the proposed changes quickly showed more hostility among lawmakers than support. The Democrat-dominated Committee on the Public Sector heard testimony from a Republican lawmaker and key Schwarzenegger official on privatizing the state's pension systems, but openly feuded with them, revealing the growing partisan divide over the issue. "Are we wasting our time here when the governor has already flipped us the bird publicly?" asked Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, during testimony by state...

As one state department pursued a fraud case against a former prison correctional officer who it claimed had exaggerated his workplace injuries, the state's retirement system granted him a special pension for life. The Department of Corrections, Greg Nelson's one-time employer, says that at age 47 he claimed he hurt his back and neck in a workplace fall, only to find a new job operating heavy machinery at forest fires for as long as 14 hours at a stretch. But as investigators assembled their case against Nelson, the state's retirement system awarded him a medical pension, agreeing that his injuries...

California taxpayers could save over $1 billion annually under a proposed overhaul of the state employee pension system being pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his allies, according to a nonpartisan government analysis of the plan. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office determined that providing all new state employees with a 401(k)-style retirement plan could save the state "hundreds of millions of dollars to over $1 billion annually." The overhaul initiative was authored by San Fernando Valley Republican Keith Richman and sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a Schwarzenegger ally. Assemblyman Richman, of Granada Hills, said the LAO's analysis confirmed...

CA: THEY PROTEST TOO MUCH by Assemblyman Ray HaynesThe most interesting proposals in last week’s state of the State speech by Governor Schwarzenegger were the merit pay for teachers and the idea for changing how public employee pensions are handled. Both ideas have raised the ire of the public employee unions, and neither is likely to move very far in the California Legislature. Merit pay for teachers is a very simple idea. Our school system should reward the good teachers. Currently state law mandates that each school district adopt a “single salary schedule”, and that pay increases can only be...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - The California Public Employees Retirement System board picked Rob Feckner, a 27-year school employee and statewide union official as its president Wednesday. Chosen in a 12-0 vote, Feckner replaced labor leader Sean Harrigan, who had led the board since 2003. Feckner said he would continue the $183 billion pension fund's traditional activism in corporate governance, while spotlighting high executive salaries and publishing a CalPERS "focus list" of long-term underperforming companies. "One thing should be abundantly clear to corporate wrongdoers who are hurting shareholder value," Feckner said as he took over the nation's largest public pension fund with...

Trustees of the California Public Employees' Retirement System approved a campaign Monday asking automakers, utilities and other public companies to reveal their efforts to curb global warming. The four-prong environmental initiative, approved unanimously by CalPERS board members, comes as the international Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gas emissions takes effect Wednesday. It also comes after automakers spurned a meeting with CalPERS and the California State Teachers' Retirement System to explain a lawsuit against new state rules clamping down on greenhouse-gas exhaust from cars. "This is a bad time for the automakers to be turning in the other direction," said CalPERS...

SAN DIEGO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a stop in San Diego today to push his plans to reform California's $171 billion pension system. Flanked by two armored cars along San Diego Bay, Schwarzenegger said California's retirement plan is "bleeding our state dry." The governor proposed revamping the California Public Employees Retirement System in his State of the State address last month. He wants to change from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan for new employees – a switch that must be approved by the state Legislature. Under that plan, state workers would contribute to an investment account...

GENEVA – The booming U.S. private equity market could be heading for a crash as interest rates rise and hedge funds, desperately seeking higher returns, pour money into the sector, the chief investment officer for the biggest pension fund in the United States warned on Wednesday. "The biggest one (asset bubble) I'm afraid of at the moment is private equity," Mark Anson, CIO for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), told the International Fund Management 2005 conference organised by ICBI. "The current overhang of leveraged buyouts committed but not invested is $182 billion (end-2003 figure). A lot of money...

California has repeatedly given new and improved retirement benefits to public employees. The question now has become what, if anything, it can take back. While the state has wide latitude in scaling back pension benefits for new workers, experts say, it faces far stricter limitations when it comes to current employees. Even some of the measures proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which stop short of altering the basic pension formula in favor of steps such as encouraging workers to leave the retirement system, could trigger a legal challenge. California case law makes it clear that any changes to the pension...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to privatize California's public pension systems is a major attack on the nation's corporate reform movement, Treasurer Phil Angelides and officials of five states said as they announced a national campaign to fight the move. Instead of putting the state's pension plans on sound financial footing, Schwarzenegger's plan "is part of a concerted effort to break apart the powerful voices of public pension funds that have stood up for ordinary investors in corporate boardrooms," Angelides said Wednesday. Angelides a board member of two California retirement funds that manage a combined $300 billion. The...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Democratic officials from five states launched a nationwide campaign Wednesday to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites)'s plan to privatize California's public pension systems. California Treasurer Phil Angelides, who is leading the effort, called the Republican governor's proposal a major assault on the movement to reform corporate America following a wave of scandals. Angelides said Schwarzenegger's plan "is part of a concerted effort to break apart the powerful voices of public pension funds that have stood up for ordinary investors in corporate boardrooms." The attack came hours before President Bush (news - web sites) was...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Claims by the nation's biggest public pension fund that it has found no investments in Sudan prompted complaints Monday from U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, that the California Public Employees Retirement System is dismissing concerns about supporting Sudanese genocide. Lee released a CalPERS letter which stated it has discovered no Sudanese investments among 1,869 companies in which it owns shares. But CalPERS also acknowledged in the letter that only 11 percent of those companies responded to its survey last year about such investments. Lee spokesman Nathan Britton said the congresswoman considers the pension fund's response inadequate. Lee...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he would enlist donors from across the country to fund a multimillion-dollar fight over California's public pension system and its voting districts — reforms being watched with keen interest on Wall Street and a bit of panic in Washington, D.C. The governor's comments signaled that his ambitions for 2005 could flood California with campaign contributions from lucrative new sources. And raising money on a national scale would allow Schwarzenegger, frequently mentioned as a presidential hopeful even though the Constitution bars foreign-born citizens from serving, to take a wider stage and expand his fundraising network. In...

Under threat of an initiative to scrap California's traditional public pensions, legislators and others are scrambling to craft bills to repair the system instead. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed the initiative to replace public pensions, which guarantee retirement income based on salary and years of service, with 401(k)-style investment accounts. Strong interests - especially public employee unions and their allies - oppose abandoning the existing system. Now, they're under the gun to fix it. In the recent past, proposals to rein in pension costs haven't gained much traction. This year, however, the initiative threat is leading to a bumper crop...

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 22 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, echoing language used by those who claim Social Security is headed for a crisis, contends that California can no longer afford a generous traditional pension plan for state employees and teachers and should force all new workers into a 401(k)-style plan of private accounts. California's $300 billion pension system for its public employees is the largest state system in the nation and as early as this summer, Californians will be asked to vote on the proposed changes. The change that Mr. Schwarzenegger has endorsed is supported by a number of Republican state...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named Marjorie Berte, a California State Automobile Association vice president and former director of the Department of Consumer Affairs, to the California Public Employees Retirement System board on Friday. Berte, 52, of San Francisco, will be the third Republican on a 13-member board dominated by Democrats. The San Francisco resident will be the board's insurance industry representative, replacing Sidney L. Abrams, a consultant to several organized labor pension plans. She served as head of the Department of Consumer Affairs under former Gov. Pete Wilson. The other Republicans are Michael Navarro, Schwarzenegger's director of personnel administration,...

What's wrong with this picture? This month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the state's pension system "another financial train on another track to disaster" and proposed replacing the state's defined-benefit plans with a defined contribution for state employees hired after June 30, 2006. He also proposed a carrot and stick to entice current employees to opt out of the system starting next year. Yet last week, Moody's Investors Service gave the California Public Employees' Retirement System its highest, Aaa credit rating for a new business CalPERS is entering: Using its pension-fund assets to guarantee municipal bonds issued by states, counties and...

Government workers and their unions say that scrapping traditional public pensions, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed last week, would make it hard for the state to hire and keep qualified workers. It would rewrite the long-standing deal in which government workers trade better pay for more secure retirement, they say. Backers of the overhaul disagree, saying government workers now approach pay parity with the private sector. New 401(k)-style accounts will let workers change jobs without giving up retirement benefits, they say, encouraging a healthy rate of turnover. The reality is more complicated than either side depicts. Take the issue of...

SOMEONE ought to tell Democratic state Treasurer Phil Angelides that January 2005 is way too early to start actively campaigning for governor in 2006. He ought to stick to fund-raising for now. His television ad blitz last week in major California markets, days before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech, was premature by any standard. Even Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, expressed reservations about Angelides' attacks. Perata and legislative Democrats have said they want to work with Schwarzenegger on issues facing the state, especially education and health care. But Perata, who had not yet seen the...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) will urge lawmakers to pass a sweeping overhaul of the state's public pension systems, including Calpers, the nation's largest pension fund, an aide said on Wednesday. Schwarzenegger plans to use his "State of the State" address on Wednesday evening to back a plan that would scrap California's defined-benefit public pension plans in favor of defined-contribution plans similar to 401(k) retirement plans in the private sector. Critics of that partial privatization, which mirrors Bush administration moves to shift Social Security (news - web sites) money into private accounts, call it an attempt to...

In a Nov. 12 Orange Grove column ["Beware of stealth socialism"], I discussed the problems created when government pension funds are invested in private companies. The Register has since highlighted a heretofore-unconsidered problem - political patronage. A media group sued CalPERS to force it to divulge money-management fees it paid to financial companies. CalPERS stonewalled, and for good reason. The information it finally released showed it paid Yucaipa Cos. $8.6 million to manage a reported $50 million. If these numbers are correct, that's a whopping 17 percent fee, or about 17 times higher than what reputable mutual finds charge. The...

Federal regulators dealt a blow Wednesday to four influential public pension funds and their bid to gain a louder voice on The Walt Disney Co.'s governing board. Reversing a groundbreaking decision, the staff of the --snip-- SEC said Disney can withhold from its 2005 proxy a ballot proposal that would have empowered shareholders to nominate directors. While the proposal would have been nonbinding, a resounding vote for it would have put pressure on directors to open up the nomination process. In a letter released Wednesday, SEC officials said "there appears to be some basis ... that Disney may exclude the...

SACRAMENTO -- Sean Harrigan, ousted as president of the $182.8 billion California Public Employees Retirement System, said in an interview Wednesday that he's still convinced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Walt Disney Co. and Safeway Inc., played significant roles in his departure. "I was totally convinced in early December and late November, and I'm totally convinced today, the Chamber of Commerce and Steve Burd and Michael Eisner and the Schwarzenegger administration played a key role in making sure I wasn't re-elected by the state personnel board to the CalPERS board," Harrigan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press Wednesday...

9:23PM Calpers board opposes Social Security privatization by Anne Stanley SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- The board of administration of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, said in a statement Wednesday it has voted to officially oppose privatizing the U.S. Social Security system. Privatization could jeopardize retirement security for individuals and result in higher costs for taxpayers, board members said. Calpers is the nation's largest public pension fund with assets of $178 billion.

Lying to get a state medical pension would become a crime, and even past retirement age, disabled workers could be forced to undergo follow-up medical exams under legislation endorsed Tuesday by a committee of the California Public Employees' Retirement System. If the full 13-member CalPERS board approves the proposal today, as expected, the retirement system would sponsor a bill to revise the disability pension law for state workers and employees of local governments who are part of the system. The proposal comes in response to stories in The Bee raising questions about the use of medical pensions, especially among the...

SACRAMENTO - Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez renamed veteran Southern California union leader Mike Quevedo Jr., to the California Public Employees Retirement System board Monday, signaling the Legislature's approval for CalPERS' growing activism on corporate governance issues. Nunez called Quevedo, a board member since February 1998, "without question, the best choice," and said the union official would "continue to protect the shareholders by pursuing more corporate accountability and more corporate responsibility." The move ends speculation that Nunez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, would replace Quevedo with Sean Harrigan, a veteran labor who led the board for...

The ouster of the president of California's public pension fund has raised questions about whether pension funds, endowments and other big activist investors will be able to keep wielding influence in corporate governance campaigns. The change at the top of America's largest pension fund also underscores a growing awareness of the political and economic power lying largely untapped in the nation's retirement money - roughly $6 trillion - and an escalating dispute over how that power should be used.

Sean Harrigan and his acolytes are spinning a melodramatic tale about his ouster from the governing board of the huge California Public Employees' Retirement System - that he was such a tireless and effective critic of corporate misdeeds that business executives conspired with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to silence him. State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who longs to succeed Schwarzenegger as governor, is among those peddling that version of why the State Personnel Board replaced Harrigan as its representative on the retirement board. Harrigan, president of the CalPERS board since last year and a longtime official of the union that represents grocery...

SACRAMENTO — Sean Harrigan, whose ouster this week as president of the California Public Employees' Retirement System made headlines around the world, may soon be back on the board of the $177-billion pension fund. Harrigan lost his seat when the state Personnel Board voted 3 to 2 on Wednesday to replace him as its CalPERS representative. However, national union leaders have asked top Democrats in the state Legislature to appoint Harrigan to another open seat on the 13-member board, people familiar with the talks told The Times. And lawmakers appear to be willing to listen. State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez...

State Finance: California's massive public employee retirement fund, dubbed Calpers, sacked its top executive this week. To that we say: It's about time. If you don't know about Calpers, or think it's of interest only to California, shame on you. Calpers is the largest public investment fund on earth, and wields enormous clout in stock markets around the world — including our own. So when the State Personnel Board voted 3-to-2 to fire controversial head Sean Harrigan, it made waves. Some blamed "big business" for the firing, others a secret deal between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his big-money backers in...

<p>The ouster Wednesday of one of the United States' strongest voices for corporate reform may signal a turning point in the post-Enron era, as business groups push more aggressively to thwart activist shareholders.</p> <p>Sean Harrigan, who as president of the California Public Employees' Retirement System led efforts to impose more accountability on big business, will lose his job after California's Personnel Board voted 3-2 to replace him as its representative to the pension fund. The move was expected.</p>

SACRAMENTO -- The nation's largest public pension fund fired its president Wednesday following a tumultuous year in which he became an outspoken advocate for reform in the board room. In a 3-2 vote, the state Personnel Board pulled Sean Harrigan from his post at the $177 billion California Public Employees Retirement System, a major player in the investing world. Harrigan was elected as CalPERS board president in February 2003. Harrigan described his possible ouster earlier this week as retaliation for CalPERS stands that included withholding support from directors of 2,400 companies, and persuading fellow institutional investors to withhold votes from...

Published reports on Tuesday suggest that the California Personnel Board may remove President Sean Harrigan from the board of CalPERS when his term expires next year. Mr. Harrigan blames efforts by the governor's office and top corporate players. If removed, however, Mr. Harrigan will have no one to blame but himself. Mr. Harrigan is an international vice president and executive director with the Food and Commercial Workers International, and has used his position at the helm of America's largest public pension fund to promote a far-left political agenda rather than to mainly assure the health of the fund's sizable investments....