Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Occupy Wall Street, and I have one-seventh of the vote over several hundred million dollars

My light-speed brain took over a month to put the two issues in the blog headline together. Santa Clara Valley Water District has several hundred million dollars in financial reserves. I wonder if there's anything financially responsible that the Water District can do with the voters' financial reserves, in light of the abuse of the financial system by Wall Street titans.


Just thinking, no answers yet....

UPDATE: I figured the bunnies would have some ideas.

UPDATE 2: KQED's California Report shows other people thinking about the same thing.

9 comments:

David B. Benson said...

Miniloans?

Not micro as everything is more expen$ive in California...

Steve Bloom said...

Alt energy/conservation/efficiency to the extent state law allows. It sounds like you're not a MUD, so what's possible along those lines?

Anonymous said...

Start a water-district bank modeled on the state bank of North Dakota.

Mickey said...

Right, but as I recall, aren't most of those reserves restricted by law to specific uses? It's not like there's millions laying around you can do anything you want with. Right?

EliRabett said...

Far be it from Eli to tell you what to do, but something that might be a win/win is to invest some of it with the local credit unions, with the understanding that it will be used to make mortgage loans to members decreasing their interest payments.

With rates for Treasuries and CDs being ~ 1%, 4% on a mortgage looks pretty good.

Anonymous said...

Ask your lawyer and general manager. They should direct you to Cal. Gov. Code section 53600 et seq., which governs local agency investments.

(lawyer mouse)

Brian said...

David - we don't have the capacity to supervise microcredit, but maybe we could invest in someone who does microcredit (although I think even the big boys fool around a bit in that space).

Steve - not sure what you mean - invest our money in those fields? Sounds a little scary, but I should learn more about our investments. I think generally they're either pretty safe or pretty liquid.

JCH - got any more info?

Eli - I had a similar thought.

Anon - thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hold it with a credit union? Or start a credit union?

David B. Benson said...

Brian --- More seriously now, you might care to have a conversation with
Thayer Watkins
SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT
San Jose, California
95192-0114
whom I suggest based on his use of Levy stable distributions for rainfall but also seems somehow connected to a State of California planning agency.