http://www.assetinternational.com/AI500060http://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/LDI_2_0/We need to move beyond WHETHER to execute and LDI strategy. It's time to discuss HOW.Paula VasanWed, 27 Oct 2010 12:36:00 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/OPINION__Despite_–_or_Because_of_–_Uncertainty,_Institutional_Investors_Turn_to_Alternatives,_by_ai5000/Faced with uncertainty, institutions are turning to alternatives. With the endowment disaster of 2008 in mind, is this a good thing?Paula VasanThu, 10 Jun 2010 07:58:53 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/What_a_998-Point_Drop_Means/ ai5000 editor-in-chief Kip McDaniel takes a look at yesterday’s market movements – and what it means for continued uncertainty.Kristopher McDanielFri, 07 May 2010 06:47:54 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Views_on_Goldman/A great piece from the New York Times...Kristopher McDanielMon, 19 Apr 2010 04:43:56 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Who_Ever_Thought_There_Could_Be_Pension_Grudge_Matches_/I was recently quoted in Canada’s Globe & Mail – the True North’s only real national newspaper, equivalent to the New York Times – on the issue of internal alternative investment management at the Canadian giants – CPPIB, Caisse, PSPIB, AIMco, Ontario Teachers’...Kristopher McDanielFri, 09 Apr 2010 06:48:03 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Score_One_Up_For_the_Passives/ In the Active v. Passive debate, score one up for the latter.Kristopher McDanielThu, 01 Apr 2010 08:34:53 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/NPR_Picking_on_Public_Funds__Again_/NPR continues its (possibly justified) assault on public pensions.Kristopher McDanielTue, 23 Mar 2010 10:56:10 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Public_Pension_Map/We didn't make it, but we like it: an interactive map of public pension funding levels, state-by-state.Kristopher McDanielTue, 23 Mar 2010 12:26:55 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Who_Does_No-Bid_Contracts_Anymore,_Anyways_/On March 4, the Board of the San Diego Country Employees’ Retirement Association (SDCERA, which, for some reason, very much appeals to me as an acronym) met to discuss...Kristopher McDanielMon, 22 Mar 2010 07:43:15 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Three_Pension_Trends_from_Three_European_Funds/ I just returned from a trip to Paris and Geneva, where, over the course of three days I sat with three different pension fund leaders to discuss what’s happening in the European institutional space. What I saw and heard was encouraging. Kristopher McDanielSun, 07 Feb 2010 02:14:13 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Guest_Blogger__Tech_Czar_Robert_X__Cringely_on__Predators_and_Parasites_/Dr. Al Wojnilower of Drill Capital is as good an economist as God can make and here’s a chilling statement he made in a recent research note “In ‘old fashioned’ recessions, once inventories were pared, companies rehired the workers theyKristopher McDanielSun, 03 Jan 2010 18:59:30 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Guest_Blogger__Adam_Smith_(the_living_author,_not_the_18th_century_one)_on_Bank_Living_Wills/Starting in the new year, Asset International and ai5000 begin a partnership with famed tech-writer Robert X. Cringely and prolific author Adam Smith—he of bestsellers The Money Game and Supermoney, among many others. As a teaser, here is a post by Smith on the idea of “Living Wills” at banks. Enjoy.Kristopher McDanielThu, 31 Dec 2009 02:16:23 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/When_Gordon_Liddy_Is_Trying_To_Sell_You_Gold,_Should_You_Be_Buying_It_/  The question, then, is: If Gordon Liddy is trying to sell you gold, should you be buying it? Kristopher McDanielSat, 05 Dec 2009 04:16:41 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Status_Symbol_Leverage_vs__Resource_Leverage/  It’s not that I had foresight. It’s that I had a plane ticket.Kristopher McDanielWed, 02 Dec 2009 14:10:13 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Revisiting_Dubai_(S)Inc_/Yesterday’s news of Dubai World asking for a six-month reprieve on $60 billion in debt repayments has sent global financial markets into a downfall not seen in many months. It should not have: The Emirate’s troubles are not a surprise -- many observers, including ai5000, have been warning of trouble at Dubai World for months now.Kristopher McDanielFri, 27 Nov 2009 05:56:12 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/A_Totally_Unsubstantiated_Hypothesis__The_Reason_for_Bloomberg’s,_Corzine’s_Election_Troubles/ The backlash against Wall Street continues, if only in a roundabout way.   As a government major in college, one of the (few) lessons I retained was that, in American politics, money matters. In the vast majority of elections, theKristopher McDanielWed, 04 Nov 2009 08:13:53 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/To_LP_or_Not_to_LP__That_Is_the_Canadian_Pension_Question_/I’m starting an article for our third edition of ai5000, out in December. It’s on the Canadian defined benefit pension trend towards creating internal alternative investment platforms – mostly private equity arms. All the largest Canadian pubic plans seem toKristopher McDanielThu, 15 Oct 2009 04:06:18 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/DiNapoli_and_Moral_Investing/ Last week, New York City was a madhouse, all Presidents and Prime Ministers and Diplomats. The Asset International offices, for better or for worse, are a block away from the Waldorf Astoria, where many of them—including President Obama—were staying. GettingKristopher McDanielWed, 30 Sep 2009 08:12:40 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/A_Sneak_Preview/On Tuesday, our second digital edition of ai5000 comes out. While it has an Asian bent to it – the cover story is on China, and one main feature is on Singapore’s Central Provident Fund it covers a wide breadthKristopher McDanielThu, 17 Sep 2009 07:59:16 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/A_Suggestion__Testing_Stimulus_Efficacy_with____Gasp!____Evidence/I’m flummoxed by the debate over the efficacy of The Stimulus in America. The rhetoric from the White House is that disaster was avoided through the joint efforts of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, The Executive, and Congress the rhetoricKristopher McDanielThu, 10 Sep 2009 12:22:07 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Are_SWFs_Overemphasized_in_the_Media__Yes_/Are sovereign wealth funds really deserving of all the press they garner? I get Google Alerts each morning—ranging from “pension fund investment” to “endowment CIO”—but the one that continually has the most bulk to it is “sovereign wealth fund.” IKristopher McDanielFri, 04 Sep 2009 08:54:44 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Not_Just_Bad_Journalism__Not_Journalism_at_All_/ I’m watching an unnamed news channel. Their headline “After the break… We discuss the pros and cons to the President’s health care plan.” When the network returns from commercial, the guests, of which there are two, have both worked inKristopher McDanielWed, 26 Aug 2009 12:03:37 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Harvard,_Harvard,_Harvard/ No one ever went broke writing about Harvard. I certainly haven’t. Here’s a little secret I can tell what you’re reading. I don’t mean I can see what individuals are reading, but I can tell, en masse, what the readersKristopher McDanielThu, 20 Aug 2009 04:09:20 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/MassPRIM,_Meet_Mr__Buffett/  Having recently read Roger Lowenstein’s classic biography of Warren Buffett, and, at the same time, been writing about the Massachusetts public pension plan’s move away from alternatives, I am struck with conflicting views. For one, I would commend theKristopher McDanielWed, 12 Aug 2009 05:40:20 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Hedge_Fund_Fee_Tradeoffs/The two staple queries of financial reportage “where’s the economy headed?”, and “are hedge fund fees going to fall?” Both have been a cause of awkward interview pauses for the past decade. While the first one is essentially unanswerable –Kristopher McDanielFri, 31 Jul 2009 09:58:08 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/Sovereign_Wealth_Fund_Activity_Does_Not_Denote_Recovery/We are all looking for signs of economic recovery, for a return to the normality of gently rising equity prices and decreasing job losses. To that end, the recent rumblings by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) – the Qatar Investment Authority’sKristopher McDanielTue, 23 Jun 2009 10:24:29 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/When_‘Best_Practices’_Fail/Many financial parties and institutions share the blame for the downfall of global markets, and to pick on just one does a disservice to the immensity of the problem. To this end, the regulatory reforms proposed by the Obama administrationKristopher McDanielSun, 21 Jun 2009 13:39:25 GMThttp://assetinternational.com/News/Blog/ai5000/1,000_Words_on_Blaming_Asset_Owners/It’s easy to blame solutions are harder to come byAlthough I wouldn’t go as far as contributor Dominic Hobson does in laying a large portion of the blame for the Great Preventable Fiasco (as financial author William Cohan calls itKristopher McDanielWed, 10 Jun 2009 11:02:14 GMT