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July 11, 2010 01:14 AM UTC

Ament and Stapleton Want To Play With Your Money

  • 23 Comments
  • by: harrydoby

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

In this week’s Denver Business Journal, Ed Sealover interviews both GOP candidates for the Treasurer’s race:  J.J. Ament and Walker Stapleton.

First, the good news:  Both candidates give very good reasons why they believe Amendments 60 and 61, and Proposition 101 would be disastrous for Colorado.

But the bad news is that both are unhappy Treasurer Cary Kennedy isn’t churning the state’s $6.5 billion portfolio fast enough, or taking enough risk.  Rather, they say she’s willing to settle for solid returns each year with only a staff of 2 or 3 fund managers.

J.J. Ament has experience working the industry side of the public finance world (Citigroup), so naturally his solution to the portfolio question is to pay private traders and fund managers to churn the ol’ portfolio rather than just let those lazy bureaucrats sit on tidy profits through a “buy and hold” strategy.

Walker Stapleton, of Bush family fame, touts a one-time $20 million payout on a single real estate transaction a couple of years ago as his “track record of success”.

He has a different outlook altogether on how to invest $6.5 billion.  He sees hyperinflation just around the corner, and worries that Kennedy is following the same conservative investment strategies as her Republican predecessors, Mark Hillman and Mike Coffman.

Stapleton’s prescription to keep ahead of hyperinflation (“double digit inflation” in his words) would be to make the portfolio highly liquid so “you can get in and out of investments that you make fairly quickly”.

Not sure what sort of investments he’s contemplating that could insure double-digit returns.  Might I suggest a Ponzi scheme followed by a relaxed retirement in the Caymans?

Note:  There are no links to the article referenced, not because they are on the forbidden list, but because it is in the Premium content section of the DBJ’s website.  But I recommend you pick up a copy of the print edition or subscribe to the online edition for the full story.

What Investment Strategy Should The Treasurer Follow?

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Comments

23 thoughts on “Ament and Stapleton Want To Play With Your Money

  1. Now there’s something all moderates and indies ought to find abhorrent.  I can see the  anti-ad now. Cue the sinister music… A vote for Cary Kennedy is a vote for sensible, low risk investments and keeping a small staff.  Gee, that ought to send the middle running scared.

  2. Still suffering from an economy essentially destroyed by banking excesses, we are told we need to do it again.  Now.  Damn, ya know, we could wake up tomorrow to double digit inflation and then it would be too late.

    Does Walker get envious when he drives down Colorado Blvd. past Neil’s old Silverado towers?  

    Hasn’t CO suffered enough under one Bush?  And I’m not even talking GW.  

  3. The nerve of Kennedy, earning 2/3 percent while Wall Street is dropping 40 percent!

    Have you no decency, Ma’m.  At long last, have you no decency?

        1. It’s not ignorant.  It’s looking at how GW and his cronies for eight years tipped government functions to private enterprise and, well, cronyism.

          One arena he failed was privatizing Social Security, but it is the great and perfect example of using monies belonging to the citizens to enrich the cronies.

          Exactly what these two Republican yahoo’s are proposing, albeit variations on the theme.

          Not ignorant, my eyes are wide open.  

          1. Cary Kennedy’s success in not only preserving state funds, but getting a positive gain in a lengthy bear market is no small achievement.  And she is 100% accountable for that result.

            J.J. Ament’s idea of outsourcing the trading strategy and responsibility just means we spend more taxpayer money to take more risks.  And if things go badly, he can “fix” the problem by firing one company and hiring another, taking no blame for himself.

            Stapleton’s daytrading strategy is just plain ridiculous and seems based on junk economics  like this  or this.  

            Is hyperinflation possible?  Anything’s possible, just not highly probable.  

            Basing your trading strategy today on a hypothetical that is years away — if ever — is just stupid.

            1. deflation is the key risk again right now. All these worries over inflation are a red herring meant to draw our attention away from the real problem with the economy today, no business investment and no jobs. Because if we talked about those things, we’d have to talk about their solution, which means more stimulus. And more stimulus would have the secondary benefit of keeping us out of a deflationary death spiral.

              1. Great article (well scary too).  But our faint-hearted politicians aren’t going to lead on the issues raised in his column.

                The hyperinflation nonsense has it’s roots in the notion that the only way we can pay off our debt is to make it so much cheaper via rapid inflation.

                That’s the way the former USSR got rid of their currency overhang back in the late ’80’s — it also destroyed the savings of all the ultra conservative Russian citizens — so you can understand this theory’s appeal to the ultra paranoid nut cases and gold bug types.

                Not gonna happen here for many reasons.

  4. take your word for all the content since, as you point out, there is no actual reference to the article.

    You’re as welcome as anyone to bash Republicans and I’m not surprised by it.  But I am surprised that a diary that only says ‘Republicans bad, Dems good’ got promoted to the front page.

    1. I can’t say, but perhaps Pols wanted to make the point that this discussion, and traffic to the DBJ web site would be greatly improved via the free flow of information.

      I hope that soon a mutually beneficial business model could be worked out for all parties.  Even if it’s nothing more than a micropayment system that asks your permission to charge a few pennies to your debit card to access a site or read a specific article.

      The actual article is quite long and covers much more than I could discuss in one little diary.  But my purpose was to highlight what I feel are the salient differences between the two GOP candidates and the incumbent Democrat.

      1. The interviews are only available to paid subscribers.  So if you get the paper version, you can register to get the online copy for no extra charge.  Otherwise, you can pay to subscribe to just the electronic version.

        I almost forgot and was going to link to those pages since I do have access through my wife’s subscription.  Fortunately, I caught myself before making that mistake.

        Thus the crux of the problem faced by Old Media — how much and when to charge?

        But I do hope folks will consider buying a copy or subscribing.  It’s a decent source of local business information.

  5. It should be noted that Stapleton has never worked for any business other than what is owned by his family.  He has no idea about the real world.

  6. Of course, if Cary had been driving a less cautious investment strategy – even if she had made higher returns – Ament/Stapleton would be all over her for “putting your money at risk in these uncertain times.” Proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

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