Perry says divest investments in companies investing in Iran

Houston Chronicle:

Gov. Rick Perry is asking the multibillion-dollar state pension funds to give him a plan within 30 days for divesting any holdings in companies that do direct business with Iran.

"The examples we set in Texas can have international ramifications," Perry said in the letter, which he disclosed at a Tuesday appearance in Dallas to announce the establishment of the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce. "We can be an agent of change just as the anti-apartheid divestment movement led to changes in South Africa in the 1980s."

Perry said in July, fresh from a trip to Israel, that he wanted the divestment, and has sent a letter to governors of states that haven't taken similar action, urging them to join his call for change.

Most U.S. companies are forbidden to do business in Iran under federal law, but the pension fund investments in firms based in other countries could be affected.

Perry wants the Texas pension funds to identify direct investments in companies that do business with Iran; find equivalent alternative investments; encourage "offending companies" to change their ways; and divest holdings in companies that don't respond as desired.

...
Investment managers usually do not like to have non economic factors imposed on their investment decisions. In this case a case can be made that investments in Iran have a high degree of risk, because of the possibility that the country will be destroyed by a war it provokes because of its religious bigotry. While the investment manager may see the demand as an emotional reaction, markets are not immune from emotional movements.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more