Good point! And any academics on this list should think hard about where their TIAA-CREF money actually IS.
There's a "social responsibility" fund, for instance. But my point was a psychological one, right. Should we be lobbying TIAA to stop buying bonds issued by the likes of Bank of America, if, indeed, they do? Nick From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcus G. Daniels Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 11:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Next Dictator On 10/22/2011 10:45 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: So why did we in the middle class been so stalwart in our defense of wall street for the last 40 years? The answer, it seems to me, is that we are all stockholders. [..] Over the years CREF, which started out as a sturdy conservative fund, became a "family of funds", and you could invest your retirement money in any crap you felt like. In short, many academics lost a large proportion of their retirement. Thus, the gradual erosion of our retirement institutions in the 50's into INVESTMENT institutions has turned us all from people trying to guarantee a minimum dignified retirement income to people trying to make a stock-market killing. As Doug has pointed out many times, a large chunk of the `99%' create the problem and won't take responsibility for it. TIAA-CREF has a number of funds and lets one move between them with the latency of a few days. It's not like a retiree's financial security is held hostage to a particular fund. For example, there's this option: http://www.tiaa-cref.org/public/about/how-we-invest/sri/social-screening/ Marcus
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
