Posted on 08/17/2004 1:14:46 PM PDT by Bill Hobbs
Does the state of Tennessee unwittingly help fund terrorist-supporting nations through the investments made by its public-employee retirement system's pension plan? The answer is, we don' t know - but it's a good bet the answer is yes.
We don't know for certain, however, because officials with the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System refused to provide researchers with a Washington D.C. think tank, the Center for Security Policy, with any information about how it has invested Tennessee taxpayers' funds.
A little background: The Center for Security Policy recently completed an extensive study, Terrorism Investments of the 50 States, which is the first national security-based statistical analysis of the investment patterns of America's public pension funds. This report - available here in a 115-page PDF file - proves empirically that our country's largest and most prominent public pension systems tend to be heavily invested in global publicly traded companies that have business activities in terrorist-sponsoring states.
For example, the pension system of tiny Rhode Island has close to $400 million invested in 41 companies that actively doing business in terrorist-sponsoring countries. America's largest public pension system - the California Public Employees Retirement System - has more $17 billion invested in 201 such companies.
In fact, according to the study:
On average, America's Top 100 pension systems invest between 15 and 23 percent of their portfolio in companies that do business in terrorist-sponsoring states.
(Excerpt) Read more at billhobbs.com ...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.