Note to pensioners... I LOVED it when Noam Chomsky answered a question
from the audience at Tingley Coleseum 12 or more years ago:
Audience member: Dr. Chomsky... can you say anything about "socially
responsible investments"
Chomsky: "Socially Responsible Investment" is a contradiction in terms!
50% of the audience were young students, the other 50% were retirees (or
nearly so)... you can imagine the cognitive dissonance evident in that
moment!
Dear Academic Friammers,
Would those of you who are academics and whose retirement is in
TIAA/CREF please take note of my colleague's appeal below.
It does seem the least we can do. TIAA/CREF has seemed more and more
like an investment bank in my dealings with them since I retired. All
they think about is generating bonuses for management.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
<http://home.earthlink.net/%7Enickthompson/naturaldesigns/>
*From:*Robert Ross [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* Thursday, June 12, 2014 12:51 PM
*To:* Faculty Discussion ([email protected])
*Subject:* CREF Trustee Ballot, nominee from Goldman Sachs -- No thanks!
Dear Colleagues,
Many of you received in the last few days, proxy materials from
TIAA-CREF requesting your votes for the Board of Trustees. I am
familiar with none of the firms with which most of the Trustees
nominated are involved. But one of the nominees -- Thomas J. Kenny --
is a Goldman Sachs executive and was throughout the period of The
Great Financial Crisis.
Notoriously, Goldman Sachs sold investments to clients that its
executives knew were "crap".
/The SEC says Goldman Sachs defrauded investors in a CDO, one of those
complicated bonds that lost huge amounts of value when the housing
market went bust./
/The problem isn't that this CDO lost value. It's that a hedge fund
played a role in choosing what went into the CDO, then bet against it
--- and Goldman didn't tell people who invested in the CDO about the
hedge fund's role, according to the SEC. /[
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/04/21/a-primer-on-the-goldman-sachs-scandal.html
]
In another instance G/S sold a client CDO's which one of its managers
called a "shitty" deal. [ page 395:
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov//imo/media/doc/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf?attempt=2
<http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf?attempt=2>
]
*A principal of a firm with such contempt for its clients hardly
merits our Trust as shepherd of our retirement investments*.
Also notoriously, no one has done a day of hard time as result of
misbehavior that drove the lives of millions into the ditch of Recession.
Well, let's give the laureates of the market a taste of their own
medicine.
*Vote "AGAINST" Kenny; vote against Goldman Sachs.*
Of course self-righteous small acts of outrage are puny. But I didn't
ask for the ballot, they sent it to me. So I'm voting. And you can too.
Solidarity
Robert J.S. Ross, PhD
Research Professor of Sociology and
The Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise
Clark University
950 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01610
508 481 7739
fax: 508 303 1908
http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio/rross
<http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=67>
http://wordpress.clarku.edu/rjsross/
*/See /**/Slaves to Fashion/* <http://www.slavestofashion.org/>*/the
book about poverty and abuse in the new sweatshops/*.
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