🚀 go-pugleaf

brendan@cs.widener.edu writes:
>Was the decision to sell the stock in Time Warner owned by
>Philadelphia's municipal pension fund a good one?  (They voted
>yesterday to sell $1.6M in Time Warner stock because of Ice-T's album
>"Body Count", which has the song "Cop Killer" on it.)  What sort of
>precedent does it set?  I'm afraid that other similar groups will
>start to use the "objectionable" watermark as their metric for whom
>they should and should not fund.  Was it wise?

Well, It is probably too late wrt setting a precedence.  This decision
you mentioned is already following earlier precedents.  Specifically,
many groups sold their stocks in companies doing business in South
Africa because of apartheid.

From a fiscal point of view, the decision was a bad one.  The key
parameter to investment is profitability when you decide to sell the
stock and the dividends received from owning the stock.  On the other
hand, people can do absolutely whatever they want with their
money--including making bad investment decisions.  As long as they do
not come to me (as a taxpayer) for a bailout when their bad investment
decisions causes the pension fund to collapse, I don't care.



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In article <BRENDAN.92Jul22114846@betty.cs.widener.edu>, brendan@cs.widener.edu (Brendan Kehoe) writes:
> Was the decision to sell the stock in Time Warner owned by
> Philadelphia's municipal pension fund a good one?  (They voted
> yesterday to sell $1.6M in Time Warner stock because of Ice-T's album
> "Body Count", which has the song "Cop Killer" on it.)  What sort of
> precedent does it set?  I'm afraid that other similar groups will
> start to use the "objectionable" watermark as their metric for whom
> they should and should not fund.  Was it wise?

It is always moral to only fund with your money those activities which you
think are moral, just as it is moral to support with other actions only
those activities which you think are moral.  Thus does a free market
society express its aggregate morality.

On the other hand, the real owners of the resources involved are the
pensionees, and I don't think they have the option of moving their money
elsewhere if they in turn object to the actions of the pension fund managers.

Of course, they could always stop working for the government . . .