US. State Pensions Can’t Dump Russian Investments They Don’t Even Know They Own
By Edward Siedle
Across the nation politicians are naïvely calling for state pensions to dump their Russian investments to punish the country for its invasion of Ukraine. Since state pensions have in recent years agreed to let Wall Street fund managers keep secret their investment holdings, states don’t even know the Russian assets they hold.
Yesterday, state Attorney General Dave Yost publicly called upon Ohio’s five public employee retirement funds to divest themselves of Russian financial holdings to further punish the country over its invasion of Ukraine. Yost naively directed the five state funds to identify Russian equities and divest as quickly as possible.
Good luck with that.
Also yesterday, Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner and the State Investment Commission voted to pull state pension assets from Russia. Magaziner’s office claims the market value of its Russian investments prior to the invasion was no more than $30 million. Don’t count on it. Magaziner is almost certainly not including Russian assets held in secretive private funds offshore.
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