Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read announced to Willamette Week his intent to run for the Secretary of State position in 2024. He is shifting his focus from seeking the governor’s office to secretary of state. Read is prohibited by term limits from running again for State Treasurer.

The open position for secretary of state comes after Shemia Fagan resigned for moonlighting as a consultant for a cannabis company and criticism over the questionable donations from the bankrupt cryptocurrency firm FTX.

Now Read’s office may be facing similar criticism. According to the New York Times, the Oregon State Treasury “routinely understate” the risks of their investments in private equity funds. Michael Markov, a mathematician who runs a financial technology company told the Times: “Oregon’s pension fund is over 40 percent more volatile than its own reported statistics show”.

The state pension fund has been pouring money into private equity funds engaged in debt-fueled takeovers of companies promising high returns. Markov says that, on average, the risks being carried by public pension funds are at least 20% greater than they are reporting, largely because they aren’t taking account of the true risks embedded in private equity, and Oregon is twice that.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Individual investors of private equity funds are rich enough to be insulated from fund losses. But public pension plans don’t give the option to decide where their money is invested. The Securities and Exchange Commission considers private equity too complex and perilous for ordinary people to rely on as core investments, an assessment Markov wholeheartedly agrees with.

In the long Oregon legislative session this year, the mounting deficit for the PERS fund was not addressed. Who will run for state treasurer to address this risk? What qualifications does Read bring to Secretary of State?


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2023-08-14 21:16:57

Last Update: 2023-09-20 20:11:11