"I remain of the view that the [New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZSF)] is serving no useful purpose and should be wound up…
“One of the annoying aspects of the Fund is the way in which the Board and management get to take your tax money and mine, and invest (or not) in causes which they happen to find appealing … this has little to do with a careful evaluation of financial investment risk and a lot more about politics and 'good causes' – virtue signalling…
"Perhaps the NZSF choice[s] will be widely popular. But that isn’t their job. In fact, it has always been one of the dangers of the Fund. It isn’t their job to be playing politics by tilting the portfolio towards trendy causes…
"If the public wants to ban dairying, or oil and gas exploration, then elect the politicians to make those calls, and hold them to account. But let's not have bureaucrats and unaccountable Board members pursuing personal agendas ... with our money. If the economic and financial case is really there – and remember that active management calls of this sort don’t have a great track record globally – then lay it out for us to see. On what they’ve released to date, this look much more like a virtue-signalling call than one consistent with the NZSF’s statutory mandate, or with the sort of professional expertise we should hope for from well-remunerated investment managers.”
~ Michael Reddell, from his
post ‘Virtue Signalling with Your Money'
.
