A few readers have

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A few readers have said I was terribly unfair to Jeb Bush for implying that he had some role in getting the Florida state pension fund to buy Enron stock as it slid into oblivion last Fall.

This surprised me because I didn’t say that, or even imply it.

Here’s what I said …

One of the three trustees of the Florida pension fund is Governor Jeb Bush. But there is as yet no evidence that he acted as anything more than a passive overseer. The actual decision-making was coming from the private company managing the state’s money.

That sounds pretty straightforward to me. How ’bout you? In fact, my reason for mentioning Bush was to make the point that though he was a fiduciary of the fund, and thus had some legal responsibility for its management, he didn’t seem to have actually made any of the decisions about which stocks were bought.

In any case, some thought I was trying to accuse him or perhaps accomplish the same through innuendo (perhaps because of the ordering of the paragraphs?). So let me say for the record that I wasn’t. I’ve seen no evidence that Bush took any role in choosing which stocks were purchased.

A few readers have also said I’m being unfair to Alliance Capital. To them my response is quite different. We don’t know Alliance did anything more than make a bad call in getting Florida to load up on Enron as the company was being exposed as a money-loser and a book-cooker. But as far as I’m concerned they have a lot of explaining to do.

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