公共养老金计划把他们的未来押在对冲基金上

即使在当时，听起来也不算多。2002年4月，加州公共雇员退休系统向五家对冲基金公司总共投资了5000万美元。对于当时美国最大的州养老金计划2357亿美元的CalPERS来说，开5000万美元的支票几乎不是一件引人注目的事情。但作为最初10亿美元配置的第一步，这项投资对对冲基金业来说是一个里程碑式的时刻。这标志着公共养老基金对对冲基金经理投资计划的首批重大承诺之一。此前，养老基金界及其顾问一直回避对冲基金经理，认为这是一个风险太高、保密性太强的群体。以目前才开始完全明朗的方式，这将极大地改变公共养老金的投资方式。CalPERS有充分的理由想进入对冲基金。到2002年，由于对科技和电信股的狂热为个人和机构创造了数万亿美元的纸面财富，美国股市在20世纪90年代末曾一度过热，现在却在熊市中暴跌。与大多数美国公共养老金一样，CalPERS在这类证券上进行了大量投资，作为对大盘股进行大规模配置的一部分，这使得该计划在繁荣时期变得富有，但在下跌的过程中受到了伤害。该基金在截至2001年6月30日的财政年度亏损123亿美元，第二年亏损97亿美元。CalPERS在2000财年拥有110%的资产以满足其未来养老金负债，但资金不足，资金比率为95.2%，并且不断下降。一个看到白板上文字的人是马克·安森。拥有博士学位的律师。在金融领域，安森于1999年从纽约奥本海默基金会（OppenheimerFunds）招募到CalPERS，负责其另类投资。2001年12月，当他成为首席信息官时，他非常担心。安森告诉机构投资者：“我可以看到网络泡沫的破灭及其影响。”。“我担心我们的资产增长不会比我在负债方面看到的更快。”安森认为，对冲基金投资将有助于在市场压力时期保护CalPERS。对安森来说，对冲基金是他们自己的资产类别，也是使投资组合多样化的宝贵工具，超越了传统的债券和股票。在安森在CalPERS任职期间撰写并于2002年出版的《另类资产手册》（Handbook of Alternative Assets）中，他用了150多页的篇幅介绍对冲基金，其中包括如何建立投资计划和处理风险管理的章节。不幸的是，当CalPERS开始认真投资对冲基金时，阻止2000年至2002年熊市的大屠杀为时已晚，但安森仍然相信，资产类别将有助于未来的退休计划。他并不孤单。2002年，新当选的新泽西州州长吉姆·麦格雷维（Jim McGreevey）任命对冲基金经理奥林·克莱默（Orin Kramer）为新泽西州投资委员会董事会成员，该委员会负责管理花园州当时620亿美元的退休系统。与CalPERS一样，新泽西基金也因熊市而伤痕累累；它还承受着27.5亿美元养老金债券形式的债务负担。克莱默开始推动该系统投资于替代品，强调多样化和风险管理的好处。但充满政治色彩的环境使变革变得困难。在宾夕法尼亚州，彼得·吉尔伯特运气更好。作为宾夕法尼亚州雇员退休系统的首席信息官，吉尔伯特于1998年获得董事会的许可，开始投资对冲基金。他说，在投资于四家长短股票基金经理的“直接投资”尝试失败后，2002年，当时价值230亿美元的PennSERS聘请了总部位于纽约的私募股权公司百仕通集团（Blackstone Group）的对冲基金子公司百仕通另类资产管理公司（BAAM）。吉尔伯特是“便携式阿尔法”（portable alpha）的早期公共基金采用者之一，该策略采用活跃经理人（通常是对冲基金）的阿尔法（alpha）或高于市场回报率的回报率，并将其转移到投资组合中更为传统的部分（在宾夕法尼亚州退休系统中，是大盘股美国股票）。2002年至2006年间，其他大型国家养老基金开始投资对冲基金，其成熟程度各不相同。他们包括纽约、密苏里、马萨诸塞、德克萨斯、犹他，最后是新泽西。截至2006年5月，总部位于加利福尼亚州玛丽娜·德雷（Marina del Rey）的投资咨询公司克利夫沃特（Cliffwater）发现，美国21个州的退休系统正在使用对冲基金，总投资承诺为280亿美元。但也有一些基金受到了阻碍，比如爱达荷州的公共雇员退休系统和华盛顿州投资委员会（Washington State Investment Board）。有的被依法禁止投资;；其他人不相信对冲基金适合公共计划。对冲基金投资亚博赞助欧冠sting remained controversial. The hedge fund experiment was put to the test in 2008, when, under the pressure of too much bad debt, the U.S. housing and mortgage markets collapsed. That was soon followed by the near-failure of the banking system, the credit markets and the entire global financial system. State pension plans lost, on average, 25 percent in 2008, according to Santa Monica, California–based Wilshire Associates’ Trust Universe Comparison Service. That was better than the broad U.S. stock market — the Standard & Poor’s 500 index plummeted 38.5 percent in 2008, its third-worst year ever — but it lagged the performance of the typical hedge fund, which was down 19 percent, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. Hedge fund managers often like to tell investors they’ll be able to deliver positive absolute returns regardless of what happens to the market, but in 2008 most managers didn’t live up to those expectations. Hedge funds did, however, cushion their investors against the near-record drop in the stock market and proved their value as portfolio diversifiers. Now, a decade after the first generation of public pension plans started to invest in hedge funds, more and more are looking to do so. In fact, today some of the biggest holdouts from the past decade are beginning to embrace hedge funds, including the $153 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the $152.5 billion Florida State Board of Administration and the $74.5 billion State of Wisconsin Investment Board. If things looked bad for defined benefit pension plans in 2002, they look a whole lot worse today. The 126 public pension systems tracked by Wilshire Associates had, on average, a funding ratio for the 2009 fiscal year of 65 percent — meaning they had only 65 percent of the assets needed to pay for the current and future retirement benefits of the firefighters, police officers, schoolteachers and other public workers covered by their plans. The situation has been exacerbated in states like Connecticut and Illinois, which in the intervening decade decided to increase benefits without increasing their contributions to pay for them. “The pension benefit promises that have been made to unions by politicians have been in many respects unrealizable,” says Alan Dorsey, head of investment strategy and risk at New York–based asset management firm Neuberger Berman. To make up for the shortfall, public pension plans have few places to turn. In the current economic environment, it is political suicide to even broach the topic of raising taxes. And despite calls from some high-ranking officials, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to reduce health care and retirement benefits for public workers, getting state legislators to approve such cuts won’t be easy. For beleaguered public pension officers, the best and perhaps only solution is to try to figure out a way to generate better investment returns. “Hedge funds start looking attractive because of their superior liquidity relative to private equity and real estate, and superior risk-adjusted returns relative to the overall market,” says Daniel Celeghin, a partner with investment management consulting firm Casey, Quirk & Associates, who wrote a seminal paper on the future of hedge fund investing in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. That is, of course, assuming that hedge funds continue to put up superior risk-adjusted returns. Capturing alpha — skill-based, non-market-driven investment returns — is, at the end of the day, the whole point of putting money in hedge funds. Although hedge funds as a group didn’t produce the same amount of alpha in the past few years as they did early last decade, it appears that they added some.

产生阿尔法的能力使对冲基金能够证明其高昂的费用是合理的。管理者通常收取“2加20”：管理费为资产的2%，绩效费为利润的20%。对冲基金的基金更难证明其管理和业绩费用（通常为1和10）的合理性，投资者必须在基础经理人费用的基础上支付这些费用。因此，许多最初通过基金中的基金进行投资的注重费用的养老金计划现在选择直接投资。然而，这种方法可能会使对冲基金投资更具挑战性，特别是对于投资人员较少的养老金计划。前PennSERS投资主管吉尔伯特（Gilbert）表示，对冲基金不像传统的基金经理。吉尔伯特现在是Lehigh大学的首席信息官，负责管理宾夕法尼亚大学10亿美元的捐赠基金。对冲基金经理需要更多的尽职调查和持续监控，因为在寻找阿尔法的过程中，他们几乎没有任何约束。吉尔伯特说：“你真的必须知道对每一位对冲基金经理的期望，以及你将如何使用他们。”。大多数投资顾问（公共计划通常依赖于该集团来帮助选择经理人——后者可以以较低的成本接手一只基金中的一只基金）仍在努力为对冲基金提供咨询。就公共养老金计划而言，其数十亿美元和严格的投资要求正在改变对冲基金实验的参数。在2011年1月的一份报告中，咨询公司Cliffwater发现，截至2010财年末，在其调查的96个州养老金计划中，有52个计划的对冲基金投资总额为630亿美元，比四年前增加了一倍多。“公共养老基金是将塑造对冲基金行业的投资集团，”德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）在美国的全球优质金融销售和资本引入主管斯科特·卡特（Scott Carter）表示，他同时也是对冲基金咨询部的联席主管。

高盛资产管理(Goldman Sachs Asset Management)另类投资和经理人挑选部门全球主管Christopher Kojima将同意Carter的评估。Kojima表示:“我们目前在公共计划中看到的辩论，远不是关于对冲基金是否为实现其目标做出了明智的贡献。”“我们更多遇到的问题是，如何投资对冲基金。”养老基金正在研究如何识别和监控高管，考虑风险管理，并将对冲基金与更广泛的投资组合联系起来。“对冲基金是一个独立的资产类别吗?”小岛问道。答案越来越多地是否定的。

公共养老金计划并不是第一批尝试对冲基金的机构投资者。在20世纪80年代末和90年亚博赞助欧冠代初，一组富有影响力的捐赠基金和基金会投资者沉浸在现代投资组合理论中，开始探索这样的观点：这些管理者摆脱了传统基金的约束，可以提高他们的回报。早期的对冲基金投资温室位于少数几所大学的校园内，包括杜克大学、哈佛大学、北卡罗来纳州、圣母大学、弗吉尼亚州和耶鲁大学。作为耶鲁大学康涅狄格州纽黑文投资办公室的负责人，大卫·斯文森开创了一种捐赠投资方法，该方法将重点放在其他投资上，包括对冲基金。斯文森在耶鲁大学的助手们将继续管理一个学校捐赠网络，将他的想法带到他们身边。杜克大学、北卡罗来纳州和弗吉尼亚州与纽约老虎管理公司（Tiger Management Corp.）创始人、当时顶级对冲基金经理之一朱利安·罗伯逊（Julian Robertson Jr.）关系密切。他们信奉老虎投资风气——从根本上讲是专注于多空策略，有时倾向于宏观——作为回报来源。对于那些早期的采用者来说，对冲基金证明了他们的价值。1993年，HFRI基金加权综合指数上涨了30.88%，是标准普尔500指数总回报的三倍多，标准普尔500指数上涨了10.1%。随着牛市开始狂飙，相对而言，对冲基金的业绩并没有那么令人印象深刻。1997年，HFRI指数上涨16.79%，约为标准普尔500指数总回报率的一半，该指数上涨33.34%。第一个开始认真研究对冲基金的公共计划是弗吉尼亚退休制度。20世纪90年代初，该基金对一家铁路公司进行了一项有争议的投资，导致1993年12月公布的一项立法审查发现，该系统有太多积极的管理人员，支付了太多的费用，但没有看到太多的结果。审查建议修改州法律，允许退休制度在其可以进行的投资类型上拥有广泛的自由裁量权。这一变化于次年颁布，为对冲基金投资打开了大门。到1998年，弗吉尼亚州已将其当时230亿美元的资产中的18亿美元投资于市场中立的多空管理公司，同时对其股票投资组合的很大一部分进行了指数化。2001年，弗吉尼亚州开始与D.E.Shaw&Co.商谈让这家总部位于纽约的对冲基金公司为退休制度运行一项基准长期策略。D.E.Shaw是一家由计算机科学家David Shaw于1988年创建的定量商店，是一家经典的对冲基金公司：超保密、利用杠杆、收取高额费用，并专注于寻找回报。在弗吉尼亚州之前，该公司与公共养老金计划没有任何密切关系，但它很快意识到了这些计划的潜在价值。纽约D.E.Shaw公司产品开发和投资者关系主管特雷·贝克（Trey Beck）表示：“多年来，我们一直关注绝对回报。”。“这给了我们一个进入基准业务的机会。”建立机构业务的决定意味着D.E.Shaw需要生产能够相对表现的基金。它还需要变得更加透明，该公司已经开始这样做（1999年，它在证券交易委员会注册为投资顾问）。D.E.Shaw开始扩大其投资者关系和报告。贝克说：“我们必须很快地加快速度。”。“因为十年前对冲基金投资者对经理的要求与对传统产品投资者的要求大不相同。”CalPERS对冲基金的故事始于Bob Boldt，他是从基金经理Scudder引进的，Stevens&Clark于1996年12月担任公共市场高级投资官。博尔特是对冲基金的大力倡导者，到1999年9月，他似乎已经如愿以偿了。卡普斯聘请了其第一位对冲基金经理，投资了3亿美元，总部位于旧金山的以技术为中心的关键资产管理公司，博尔特的卡普尔计划在对冲基金中投资112亿5000万美元。然后，博尔特于2000年4月离开。七个月后，他在Pivotal登陆。支付人才薪酬一直是公共养老金计划的一个问题。但管理通常伴随着对冲基金投资的更复杂的投资组合所带来的额外挑战使其成为一个更大的问题，特别是考虑到对冲基金行业和公共养老金行业之间薪酬水平的巨大差距。博尔特并不是唯一一个做出这一转变的人，尽管他在Pivotal的任期很短。（该公司在网络泡沫破裂后倒闭。）在博尔特缺席的情况下，CalPERS继续采取措施建立对冲基金计划。2000年11月，董事会批准了一项向对冲基金投资10亿美元的计划。（那时，安森已晋升为senior investment officer for public markets.) The following May, CalPERS hired fund-of-funds firm BAAM as a strategic adviser to its hedge fund portfolio, to help identify and interview potential managers, perform due diligence and provide risk management and reporting. This was a major change in the way an institution worked with a fund-of-funds firm. CalPERS paid less in fees than it would have if BAAM had been managing the money, and it had more control over the portfolio and transparency into the underlying managers. It also got to educate itself about hedge fund investing and grow its in-house expertise. “We had not yet built up the staff within CalPERS, and we did not have feet on the ground,” says Anson, who became CIO in December 2001. “There were only so many due diligence trips I could take myself as CIO. We needed to really outsource some human capital.” For all its pioneering work, CalPERS was actually slow to invest its first $1 billion in hedge funds. By December 2002, PennSERS had overtaken it as the largest public pension investor in hedge funds, with $2.5 billion allocated to four absolute-return fund-of-funds managers: BAAM, Mesirow Advanced Strategies, Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners and Pacific Alternative Asset Management Co. (Public pension funds like PennSERS preferred the moniker “absolute-return funds” over “hedge funds” because it was more politically palatable when discussing their investments.) But rather than carve out a separate allocation, PennSERS housed its hedge fund investments in its equity portfolio as part of its portable-alpha strategy. That made it much easier for then-CIO Gilbert to build a hedge fund portfolio that rivaled many endowments’ in size and scope. By June 2006, PennSERS had invested $9 billion of its $30 billion in assets in hedge funds. New Jersey’s Kramer is also a big believer in the benefits of investing in hedge funds. But when he became chairman of the board of the New Jersey State Investment Council in September 2002, he couldn’t act on that belief because the state’s antiquated pension system was prohibited from using any outside managers — alternative or traditional. By November 2004, Kramer had gotten the Investment Council to agree to allocate 13 percent of its assets to alternatives (private equity, real estate and hedge funds), overcoming the objections of state unions, which accused Kramer and his fellow board members of wanting to give fees to their Wall Street fat-cat friends. New Jersey made its first hedge fund investments in the summer of 2006. “There is no avoiding politics at public plans, in the same way that you would have it at a school district or at an investment board,” says Neuberger Berman’s Dorsey. “What winds up happening is that you end up handcuffing the investment performance.” With their high fees, wealthy founders and reputation for risk-taking, hedge funds became an attractive political target. Hedge fund managers, for their part, were not used to dealing with the scrutiny that invariably comes with running public money. Some decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. For those managers that did take public money and suffered major losses, the headlines were especially unforgiving. Just ask Nicholas Maounis, the founder of Amaranth Advisors, a Greenwich, Connecticut–based multistrategy manager that at one time was among the 30 largest hedge fund firms in the world. In the summer of 2006, the press skewered Amaranth after the firm’s supposedly diversified flagship fund lost more than $6 billion betting on natural-gas futures and had little choice but to shut down.

Amaranth的投资者包括一些美国最大的公共基金，包括新泽西系统、PennSERS和马萨诸塞州养老金储备投资管理委员会(Massachusetts ' Pension reserve Investment Management Board)，不过他们的大部分敞口是通过对冲基金的基金进行的。新泽西州当时的首席投资官威廉•克拉克(William Clark)在2007年1月给投资委员会(Investment Council)的一份备忘录中指出，该基金在同月从单只股票头寸中受到的打击更大。(新泽西州对Amaranth的总敞口为2,180万美元，占其总投资组合的3个基点。)苋菜之前,最大的对冲基金已经另一个灾难格林尼治的公司,长期资本管理公司,著名的失去了44%的资本在1998年8月,俄罗斯拖欠债务后,不得不接受纾困的一个财团的14个银行由纽约联邦储备银行。该集团为该基金的90%出资36亿美元。但长期资本管理公司几乎没有机构资金。

在最近的金融危机期间，公共养老金计划并没有那么容易实施。金融危机始于2007年的次级抵押贷款市场问题，并在2008年9月雷曼兄弟控股公司申请破产时失控。当月HFRI指数下跌6.13%。2008年10月，该指数进一步下跌6.84%，对冲基金开始设置大门，防止投资者赎回。企业清算陷入困境的资金，或将陷入困境的非流动资产转移到所谓的“侧袋”中，将投资资本套牢，直到被隔离的资产被解封。根据HFR的数据，2008年有创纪录的1470家对冲基金被清算。作为一名对冲基金投资者，这是一段极其艰难的时期。

根据HFR的数据，从2002年到2008年初，对冲基金行业的规模翻了三倍，从6255亿美元的资产飙升至近1.9万亿美元。大部分新资金——约6100亿美元——来自机构，包括公共基金。这些大投资者开出的支票比大多数经理人习惯收到的支票都要多；5 000万至1.5亿美元的直接承诺并不罕见。正如科学家可以通过观察实验结果来改变实验结果一样，机构投资者的涌入，尽管他们不仅仅是观察者，也必然会影响对冲基金的回报状况。随着过去十年的发展，一些专家开始怀疑，对冲基金的大部分回报实际上不是阿尔法回报，而是市场驱动的回报，即贝塔回报，这些回报利用借来的资金进行杠杆化，以产生看似优异的结果。2008年的事件证明了这一点，当时市场崩溃，借贷突然变得非常昂贵。纽伯格伯曼（Neuberger Berman）的多尔西（Dorsey）和前CalPERS首席信息官安森（Anson）都是研究贝塔蠕变的基金经理之一。随着时间的推移，对冲基金的表现越来越受市场驱动。“或者，正如我喜欢称之为‘令人毛骨悚然的测试版’” ” 安森打趣道，他现在是加州门罗公园橡树山投资管理公司的管理合伙人。贝塔测试本身并不坏，只是投资者不想为市场回报支付对冲基金2-20英镑。2005年安森离开CalPERS后，对冲基金亚博赞助欧冠计划在glo高级投资组合经理的指导下加快了速度bal equities Kurt Silberstein。两年前，CalPERS用Paamco和UBS取代了BAAM，开始了一项直接对冲基金投资计划以及基金承诺计划。Silberstein为美国最大的公共养老金计划所取得的成就感到自豪。“我们经营一个非常保守的投资组合，对于我们承担的每一个风险单位，我们都会得到一个单位的回报，”他说。然而，进入2008年，CalPERS的对冲基金投资组合有太多的贝塔系数，当年下跌了19%。西尔伯斯坦坦承2008年是“一个真正的黑眼”而且，如果2008年发生在美国建立该计划两年后，养老金系统可能不会继续投资于对冲基金自危机以来，西尔伯斯坦几乎完全重做了直接对冲基金投资组合，终止了与许多在2008年表现不佳的多空股票和多策略基金经理的关系。如今，他更喜欢与他认为更有可能增加alpha的较小基金经理进行投资。CalPERS也对其进行了更密切的控制美国对冲基金投资公司。该公司现在要求其对冲基金更好地调整费用，使加州计划能够在管理人下一年亏损的情况下收回其在好年景中支付的20%的业绩费中的一部分。CalPERS尽可能使用单独或管理的账户而不是混合基金进行投资；这意味着持有标的证券的是它，而不是经理。“你可以通过控制你的资产来降低商业风险，”西尔伯斯坦说。“一旦你拥有了控制权，你就不必对合同条款如此严格，因为如果我不喜欢经理所做的事，我可以拿着我的钱走开。”CalPERS并不是唯一一家提出此类要求的公司。它在萨克拉门托的跨城同行CalSTRS正通过一项全球宏观计划向对冲基金迈出第一步，该计划将完全使用托管账户进行处理。在价值198亿美元的犹他州退休系统公司，副首席投资官劳伦斯·鲍威尔（Lawrence Powell）也一直在与对冲基金打硬仗对冲基金经理对费用的关注。对于对冲基金的基金来说，费用仍然是一个大问题，因为越来越多的公共基金选择使用成本较低的投资顾问来帮助他们构建和监控对冲基金投资组合。不过，纽伯格伯曼的多尔西从2002年到2002年在康涅狄格州达里恩的咨询公司罗杰斯凯西工作h 2006，认为基金中的基金可以在公共计划中发挥重要的信息作用。“大多数对冲基金的基金都有大量的员工，这些人都在与对冲基金经理进行持续的联系、每月的谈话和电话会议。”他表示。尽管一些公共养老金官员对对冲基金2008年的表现感到失望，但他们越来越多地开始将对冲基金视为一种管理资金的方式，而不是一种独特的资产类别。例如，弗吉尼亚州退休制度并没有将对冲基金经理划分为他们自己的团队，而是将其分类M根据他们投资的证券类型，总部位于纽约的西奈山医疗中心基金会的Scott Pittman（CIO），其10亿美元的捐赠基金中有超过70%投资于不同资产类别的对冲基金，认为这种方法更有意义。“当你拿拥有很多不同证券的对冲基金来说ities and strategies and group them together and call it an asset class, you are ignoring the consequences of those exposures on the overall portfolio, both unintended and intended,” Pittman says. “Hedge funds are just a vehicle by which we invest.” One of the effects of 2008 was to increase discussions about risk management. Institutional investors realized they had not been doing a good enough job of paying attention to risk. The result is that some institutional investors — including Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., CalSTRS and the Wisconsin Investment Board — have been working with hedge funds or money managers that offer hedge-fund-like strategies to put together portfolios that, through tactical asset allocation and hedging, can offer overall risk protection. “We are trying to develop a system that does not seek to time the market but does try to identify those extreme left-tail events,” CalSTRS CIO Christopher Ailman recently told Institutional Investor, referring to statistically rare events, like those experienced in 2008, that can have a seismic impact on markets and returns. Funds designed to hedge against tail risk often rely on derivatives-trading strategies and as a result have their own built-in leverage. Such funds can act as a drag on a portfolio when markets are rising, but they are expected to provide a valuable hedge in times of significant market stress and volatility. The real key to pension fund investing has always been asset allocation — long the purview of investment consultants. As hedge funds, which roam all over the capital structure looking for returns, become a more integrated part of what pension plans do, investment officers and their boards are leaning on their managers to answer more of their general asset allocation and investment concerns. Hedge funds have had to learn to become more receptive to such inquiries from their largest clients. “The industry mind-set has changed,” says D.E. Shaw’s Beck. Hedge fund managers realize that public funds want to be able to call up investment professionals at their firms for insights into what is happening in the markets and for their views on macroeconomic events. The Washington State Investment Board is looking forward to just such a relationship with D.E. Shaw. In April the board voted to approve the firm for a global non-U.S. active equity mandate. “Part of the reason we chose the manager was not just for the product but because of the depth of resources and talent at the investment manager that we will have access to,” says CIO Gary Bruebaker. “I call it noninvestment alpha.” Bruebaker was a member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ investors’ committee when it released its report on hedge fund investing in April 2008. Although he appreciates the merits of D.E. Shaw, he has no plans to invest in the firm’s hedge fund strategies or, indeed, with any hedge funds at all. “I take my responsibilities very personally; I manage the financial future of over 400,000 public employees, many of whom work a lot harder than I do,” says Bruebaker, whose mother was a public employee. “If there was a way I could make more money on a risk-adjusted basis, I would find a way to do it.” But he just does not believe the $82.2 billion Investment Board has any competitive edge when it comes to investing in hedge funds. Public funds, he says, should be cautious investing in hedge funds: “Many of them don’t have the flexible budgets or the dollar amounts to hire the kind of skill sets they need to help them do the due diligence that would be necessary to do it correctly.”

今年2月，克雷默从投资委员会辞职后，新泽西州失去了一位技术高超的投资者。在担任董事会主席的最后一年，他成功地推动提高了新泽西州投资另类投资的上限。但即使是克雷默，也因多年来为将价值747亿美元的退休制度引入现代投资时代而疲惫不堪。尽管公众监督在防止腐败方面发挥着重要作用，但公共养老金制度的政治性质可能会疏远最优秀的投资人才。然而，资源有限、资金短缺的公共基金最需要帮助，尤其是在它们的投资组合变得越来越复杂的情况下。