California Today: Is the Long-Looming Pension Crisis Already Here?
David Crane, a lecturer at Stanford and a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the bringer of bad news. For more than a decade, Mr. Crane, a San Francisco Democrat and former investment banker, has been forecasting a disaster in California’s pension system. He was removed from the board of directors that oversees benefits paid to California’s teachers after repeatedly warning that the fund’s investment assumptions were too rosy, and since then has continued to scream about a coming financial reckoning.
Today, in addition to teaching at Stanford, Mr. Crane is the president of Govern for California, a network of political donors whose members include the former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, and the Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and supports candidates from both parties – so long as they are willing to tackle important but politically unpopular issues like pension and education reform.
Read More: New York Times
