A report issued earlier this week by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) implies otherwise.  The report entitled “CalPERS for California 2014” trumpets CalPERS’ investment in California businesses and its indirect support for jobs here.  CalPERS claims to have invested in 615 publicly traded companies headquartered in California.  In 21 of these companies, CalPERS’ investment is more than $100 million.

CalPERS paints the lily, however, with this claim:

CalPERS provides an important source of capital for use in all the activities of the public companies and fixed income opportunities in which it invests.

Unless CalPERS purchased the shares directly from the issuer, the purchase price was paid to the seller of the shares.  That seller, moreover, could be located anywhere in the world.  When purchases are made in the secondary market, it is simply false and misleading to suggest that the buyer is providing capital to the issuer.