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Ohio AG’s making oblique threats to charge protestors with felonies for masking up via an old anti-KKK law.
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May 7, 2024 01:45
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so why do the major universities all have investments with Israel anyway
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May 8, 2024 04:37
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:so why do the major universities all have investments with Israel anyway Endowments are simply financial vehicles specifically for universities. How that money gets spent (or invested) is up to each individual school, but ostensibly they're excess funds donated by alumni/benefactors, various grants and awards from the federal government or other institutions, etc. They invest with Israel because those investments are seen as safer and/or more lucrative than other investments, in line with their specific financial goals. Up until recently, there was nothing particularly controversial about investing in Israeli companies.
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May 8, 2024 04:51
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:so why do the major universities all have investments with Israel anyway They're not invested in Israel itself, they're invested in companies that are headquartered in Israel or have some other kind of connection to Israel. As for why, it's not like they're picking and choosing specific companies to invest in. They're putting their money in diversified hedge funds and poo poo, and those funds are spreading their money across all kinds of companies all over the world. And Israel has a lot of tech companies, finance companies, and manufacturing companies, all of which tend to have a lot of profit potential for investors. For example, the University of Minnesota says that just 0.1% of their endowment is invested in Israeli or Israel-linked companies: 
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May 8, 2024 04:53
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Main Paineframe posted:They're not invested in Israel itself, they're invested in companies that are headquartered in Israel or have some other kind of connection to Israel. This is going to vary quite a bit by school. UMinn's endowment isn't small, but it's nothing compared to Harvard (~$50B), Yale (~$40B), or even Texas A&M (~$17B). Schools with larger endowments are far more likely to have management companies actively overseeing the funds. Harvard, as an example, puts out a publicly available financial report about their endowment. Available here. A full 50% is split between public and private equity, with 31% managed by hedge funds. The rest is split among real estate, bonds, cash, natural resources, etc.
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May 8, 2024 05:10
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Schools objecting that barely any of their money is invested in Israel anyway is hilarious. Ok if it's 0.1% or whatever then agreeing to the demands is no problem right. Just do it to make the protests go away. But they won't even do the bare minimum.
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May 8, 2024 05:58
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:so why do the major universities all have investments with Israel anyway Israel has made strategic investments in optical telecom so any college with a major optics program will have some form of interaction with Israeli companies and Israeli colleges. The integration of the Israeli BroadLight in Broadcom are in their Maple, Aspen and StrataXGS lines. I don't know the specifics of DWDM stuff but I have also heard that it's impossible to avoid Israeli technology. I imagine Israel is making investments in the emerging 50 gig pon Asics that we will see in 2030ish. If you think there is anywhere else we can get major switch Asics Nokia also devops their core switches in Israel.
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May 8, 2024 15:57
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Not sure if it's me or you having a stroke
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May 8, 2024 22:36
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VitalSigns posted:Schools objecting that barely any of their money is invested in Israel anyway is hilarious. The point is that they aren't invested in any of these companies directly, just indirectly via various mutual funds and other types of diversified holdings, so it's much more complicated than that - you would have to either move away from these types of funds entirely or try to find some fund that somehow has managed to completely avoid investing in a single one of these companies either intentionally or not. There's no wand you can wave to suddenly force a bunch of funds to divest from Israel, especially if you're not big enough to pull the strings at these funds, which I assume a mid-sized university isn't.
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May 9, 2024 05:35
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Trinity College Dublin vows to pull investments in Israeli companies on UN ‘blacklist’quote:Freedom of Information records seen by The Irish Times show the university’s endowment fund has invested in 13 Israeli companies, three of which feature on a United Nations Human Rights Council list of companies involved in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The university has said individual companies are not “handpicked” by it, but rather chosen for its portfolio by investment managers. Hm yeah they don't invest in individual companies so I guess evaluating their portfolio and determining how to reallocate their money is impossib-- quote:Following the talks, TCD said the process of divesting from investing in companies featured on the UN blacklist is expected to be completed by June. Man either somebody should tell Trinity College that they're wasting their time trying to do this without a magic wand, or we need to find out where they got their wand and what other magic it can do.
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May 9, 2024 06:01
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VitalSigns posted:Trinity College Dublin vows to pull investments in Israeli companies on UN ‘blacklist’ They're investing in different vehicles. According to their endowment policy, 65% of their endowment funds are invested in equities, not managed funds. They have investment managers which oversee their endowment, according to the article, but it isn't clear if said managers are independent or employed directly by the College (I'd assume the former). By investing directly, they have more flexibility in choosing their investments. They can buy and sell on the open market, however, Trinity College Dublin also has published guidelines for how they invest, so they have to find alternative investments that meet those guidelines. It's also worth noting that the endowment is small, meaning it's easier to find replacement investments. Back to US based endowments, one thing that hasn't been mentioned about managed funds (meaning: hedge funds) is that they often have a lockout period. This means that if you have $N invested with a fund, you are contractually obligated to announce to the hedge fund that you plan to divest or divert your investment so that they can liquidate a position to protect other investors. Those lockout periods are often from 30-90 days, but they can run longer. In practice, this means that their endowment can't be immediately moved without significant financial penalties for doing so. Given these funds have mandates to uphold, they likely aren't willing to absorb said penalties. I know your schtick is poo poo stirring, and I can't say whether or not any other schools are actively trying to divest from Israel. But each school's endowment is unique, how it's managed is unique, and it isn't necessarily easy to move that money around. Liquidity becomes a hurdle once you grow to a certain size.
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May 9, 2024 07:28
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A lockout period doesn't mean they can't divest it just means it takes time. Trinity said they would complete it in June which is... about 30 days from now. Are the students demanding divestment must occur instantly and 30-90 days is unacceptable? Seems unlikely. Pretty pathetic excuse, no offense. They can commit to doing it for fossil fuel which seems a hell of a lot more difficult to plan and execute. quote:State officials have not affirmed any of the legal filings, but several schools – including Harvard, Cornell and Stanford – said they would divest from fossil fuels shortly after complaints against them were filed. E: I did not know before that it's a legal obligation in most states for universities to invest ethically and not just a moral obligation. Although obviously they don't have to worry about the law being enforced against them for making money off a genocide that the U.S. is fully backing, ethically they probably should ya know try not to profit off mass slaughter. I mean what are universities for, to teach young people and help them develop into ethical, conscientious adults, or to make as much money as possible? Does it make sense to teach philosophy and ethics classes to 20-year-olds then turn around and say yeah you know what that stuff's for babies, when you're become big boy adults like us it's all about maximizing return on investment, baby. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 12:19 on May 9, 2024 |
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May 9, 2024 11:58
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Sorry for the double post but I'm going to stray into meta-argument territory for a second: one of the defenses for the status quo you see a lot is, well how do I explain it, it's...adding imaginary ridiculous or impossible demands to the words of people calling for change to make them sound unserious and childish so their goals can be written off as unfeasible without really addressing the substance of what they are saying. You see this with, say, universal healthcare. "You can't wave a magic wand and get a brand-new public system overnight! It takes planning and staffing and funding and it's very complicated! These idiot children don't know the first thing about how the world works!" But hardly anybody (probably almost nobody) expects it literally overnight. They want the process of drafting and passing laws to begin, just like the activists who worked for Medicare and Social Security wanted to get the government committed to implementing it, not to wave a magic wand and do it in one night. Same tactic here I think. If the students are demanding a genie wish away investments in mass murder in one second I agree that would be childish and silly but I don't think that's what they are asking for. I think they are asking for their universities to do their best to live up to the values they profess and make a good faith effort to run their endowments accordingly even if it costs them a half-percent in annual returns or whatever.
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May 9, 2024 12:40
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i think if a bunch of multi billion dollar endowments decide that they need an investment product that excludes Israeli companies it would happen very quickly. the idea that its just not possible is laughable
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May 9, 2024 12:44
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Yeah like there aren't of fossil fuel excluding funds either but the number is growing because there's a growing market for it as more institutions look for those funds to put their money in. If everyone had just given up immediately on fossil fuel divestment as impossible because the funds didn't magically already exist prior to the demand then it never would have even gotten started. Hedge fund managers like money. If a bunch colleges with huge endowments said "hey we're looking to put our billions in funds that do X", you would see some funds that do X created as dollar signs spin cartoonishly in investment CEOs eyes slot-machine style.
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May 9, 2024 13:16
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Since the arguments against divestment mostly imply the students are childishly demanding impossible things, I just happened to see an interview with one of them. https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1787679987094667368 Nothing in there sounds unreasonable or impossible. They want transparent reports on the university's investments, not unreasonable since their tuition money is contributing to it, and they want divestment from arms manufacturers, from companies that sponsor or are complicit in apartheid or genocide, for the university to use a bank at least less cartoonishly evil than Barclay's, and to help rebuild Gaza's higher education institutions which were destroyed in the war. Nothing in there about it having to happen instantly and the demands inherently imply they do not expect overnight magic (for example disclosure implies the students will be looking over the financials which takes more than one night, helping to rebuild a destroyed education system). Not sure whether "companies that sponsor or are complicit" in the Israel government's crimes includes every Israeli company or just ones identified by the UN or someone, but that sounds like the kind thing that would be worked out in good faith discussions between the students and the administration. Even if were literally impossible to ever divest from every company surely the number it's possible to divest from is more than zero especially in the long term. Oxford could do better than it's doing now.
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May 9, 2024 14:12
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| # ? May 10, 2024 22:48 |
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Seven Deadly Sins posted:The point is that they aren't invested in any of these companies directly, just indirectly via various mutual funds and other types of diversified holdings, so it's much more complicated than that - you would have to either move away from these types of funds entirely or try to find some fund that somehow has managed to completely avoid investing in a single one of these companies either intentionally or not. They could certainly divest if they wanted to. It might take some time, and it might cost them some money, but it's certainly doable. The problem is that they don't want to. It's not really about Israel specifically, either. Part of it is that institutions don't particularly feel that putting money into profitable investments with good returns is a moral issue in which they should be held responsible for what exactly they're putting money into. Part of it is that they very much don't want to be making changes to their endowment investments based solely on the ever-changing demands of one student protest movement after another, especially in cases where those protest movements don't have mass public or political support behind them. While they do sometimes give in eventually, there's always at least some pushback first. And it's going to be especially strong in cases like this where the political and financial elite are actively hostile to the movement. Big donors are openly threatening to stop donating if colleges even consider divesting from Israel, and the House Majority Leader has openly threatened consequences toward schools that don't crush their protest movements (while Johnson almost certainly has no ability to actually carry out these threats right now, it's still indicative of the political blowback schools can expect to face). Brown University has already lost one big donor solely for agreeing to hold a vote about divestment, despite the fact that the vote is expected to fail anyway.
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May 9, 2024 15:48
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