Casey Chair Robinson Addresses Nation’s Women Legislators on Protecting State Public Portfolios from Fund-Raising Efforts by Global Bad Actors’

(Washington, D.C.): Following remarks by Congressmen Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) and David Vitter (R-LA) at a plenary breakfast in New Orleans at the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Monday, Roger W. Robinson, Jr., Chairman of the Center’s William J. Casey Institute, sounded an alarm to hundreds of women state legislators, business leaders and others: Their state’s public portfolios are being penetrated by foreign “bad actors” seeking to raise funds in the U.S. capital markets. This event capped the four-day annual gathering of the National Foundation for Women Legislators, in the course of which the Casey Chair also briefed dozens of female legislators during individual Committee meetings regarding this new, urgent national security and human rights challenge.

The discussions in New Orleans came on the heels of one of the biggest victories of the Casey Institute’s four year Capital Markets Transparency Initiative, namely the announcement on 13 November by the Board of the California Public Employees Retirement System that it is introducing new, non-financial criteria (e.g. human rights, labor rights, environmental and national security considerations) to its emerging market investment decision-making process and abolishing the use of “indexes” — or baskets of stocks and bonds which, at times, include the wrong sorts of foreign enterprises — to guide international investment decisions. CalPERS’ Board decision marked the culmination of an eighteen month effort by the Casey Institute, the national AFL-CIO (as opposed to its California branch offices which initially sought to derail expanded due diligence in California and the legislative audit now underway), Freedom House and leading environmental groups aimed at encouraging California to address the growing problem of state employees investing in international human rights, labor, environmental and national security abusers.

As Mr. Robinson underscored during his remarks (see the attached excerpts), CalPERS’ expansion of its “due diligence” criteria (which the Institute hopes will formally include national security parameters following the completion of that state’s security-minded legislative audit of CalPERS and the state teachers retirement system) should serve as a model to those women and other legislators who wish to protect the financial and moral interests of their constituencies by modifying the international investment processes of their states’ public portfolios. By the conclusion of the New Orleans gathering, at least seven individual state legislators indicated that they would press their states to incorporate the Casey Institute’s recommended action agenda.

Specifically, the Institute urges all fifty state to: 1) establish a Capital Markets Task Force comprised of participants from your state treasurer’s office, public pension funds and relevant legislative oversight committees; 2) conduct a state-wide audit of your public pension funds in an effort to identify — and potentially divest — global “bad actors”; 3) add national security, human rights, religious freedom, labor rights and environmental concerns to the overseas investment decision-making process of your state; and 4) avoid the purchase of international “index funds” (or baskets of foreign stocks and bonds) in favor of evaluating foreign companies and governments on a case-by-case basis (following the California model).