The Lawsuit That Could Legalize Pay-To-Play For Pension Funds

Lambert here: The horror that is Citizens United continues to reverberate. This ties into Yves’ investigations of the opaque world of private equity, too; CalPERS, the California pension fund, has substantial private equity holdings. Far be it from me to say that CalPERS is corrupt, even if their CEO, Federico Buenrostro, did plead just guilty to bribery conspiracy for, you guessed it, placement (see below). Too bad Freddy didn’t exercise a little more self-control; if only he had waited, and if the bad guys win their case on the grounds that money is free speech, what would have been a bribe would turn into an exercise of First Amendment rights, and he could grab as many cookies out of the jar as he’d like. It’s a funny old world, as Maggie Thatcher used to say.

Yves here. I am uncharacteristically adding to a Lambert intro. I had wanted to write a short post on this issue. I think the plot may be stealthier than it appears on the surface.

Recall that there is a long-term campaign by conservatives and much of Wall Street to get government out of the pension/social safety net for the aged business. The most visible element is the long-standing effort to privatize Social Security. But public pensions have also been under attack. Even though financial firms make very nice living off their backs, the fees retail pays as a percent of invested assets is higher on smaller accounts.

So how does the pay-to-play litigation factor in? As David Sirota has been dutifully chronicling, first at Pando, now at International Business Times, there are lots of suspect, and in some cases, obviously corrupt, dealings between elected officials (who sometimes are also public pension fund trustees) and these retirement funds. As Lambert points out, we’ve written about one spectacular example at CalPERS, that of over $50 million of placement agent fees paid in connection with fundraising for a handful of private equity firms, that led to the indictment of and guilty plea from CalPERS’ former CEO. The criminal case against the placement agent is underway.

What do you think happens if this suit prevails? In a very short time, the political graft will be off the charts.

And what happens next? Vastly louder calls, with far more facts on their side, demanding that public pension funds be disbanded as political pork machines.

Nicely played.

By Ted Ballantine, Pension360.

Here’s a scenario to chew on: An investment firm makes a campaign contribution to a city mayor. Later, the mayor appoints members to the city’s pension board. The pension board decides to hire the aforementioned investment firm to handle the pension fund’s investments.

Does something seem fishy about that situation?

The SEC says yes, and they have rules in place to prevent those “pay-to-play” scenarios.

But a recent lawsuit says no: investment managers should be able to donate money to whichever politicians they choose, even if those donations could present a conflict of interest down the line. The lawsuit, filed last week by Republican committees from New York and Tennessee against the SEC, wants the court to affirm that political donations are free speech—and, by extension, current SEC pay-to-play rules are unconstitutional.

Under the SEC’s current rules (summary of pay-to-play regulation), investment advisors can’t make donations to politicians that have any influence—direct or indirect—over the hiring of investment firms. In many states, it’s the job of the governor or mayor to appoint members to the state or city’s pension board—the entity that controls pension funds’ investment decisions.

The lawsuit claims that it’s not fair to make investment firm employees choose between their career and their First Amendment rights.

But does the lawsuit have a shot? If past court decisions are any indication, it certainly has a fighting chance. David Frum writes:

It’s a good guess that the federal courts will listen sympathetically to the challenge to the SEC rule. The Supreme Court has made clear that campaign contributions are protected free speech, both for individuals and for corporations. While protecting against corruption remains a valid basis for restricting contributions, the Court has defined corruption narrowly: In the words of the majority opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC, the most recent major campaign-finance case, corruption is “an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties.” And as Justice John Roberts wrote in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the courts “must err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.” It seems very conceivable that the courts will find the SEC rule overly broad.

The SEC didn’t put these rules in place for no reason.

Over the course of a few years in the mid-2000’s, then-New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi accepted over $1 million in campaign donations and gifts from investment firm Markstone Capital. Hevesi, who at the time was the sole trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, subsequently decided that the Fund should make a $250 million investment with Markstone. Hevesi eventually pled guilty to corruption charges and served a little less than two years in prison. He is banned from holding public office again. The case was the catalyst for the pay-to-play rules the SEC currently has in place.

But Frum, in a piece written for the Atlantic today, wonders aloud whether the SEC rule targets the right people. Frum writes:

It’s a valid question whether the SEC rule is actually achieving anything.

The people with the most sway over state pension-funds decisions are not always—nor even often—elected officials. And those who exert the most effective influence over them are not always—nor even often—campaign contributors.

Frum points that it’s often placement agents who are helping to pull strings from behind the scenes. That’s been the case in California, Dallas, New Mexico and Kentucky, and those are just the high-profile ones.

From Frum:

In our belief that it’s politicians who are always and everywhere to blame for everything that goes wrong in a political system, we consign to the financial pages the abundant evidence that the most fundamental vulnerability of state pension plans to corrupt influence is located less in politicians’ need for campaign funds, and much more in the weak governance of state pension plans themselves.

As the New York Republicans’ case against the SEC winds its way through the courts, and if it begins to succeed, you’ll hear a lot of agitated discussion about what this all means for campaign finance, for Chris Christie, and for American elections. But the most important trouble—and the most disturbing practices—are located quite elsewhere. It will be worth keeping that in mind.

That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that the SEC rule should be repealed and the floodgates opened. It just means that the stuff happening behind closed doors—the opaque world of placement agents—is what we should be worried about, too. By Ted Ballantine, Pension360

The folks with more than $10,000 in the market, have spoken. Read….. Small Investors Just Proved Why Fed’s ‘Wealth Effect’ Is Bogus