Spot.us Wants Your Help Probing U.C. Regents' Investments - GOOD Blog - GOOD

Spot.us Wants Your Help Probing U.C. Regents' Investments - GOOD Blog - GOOD

We've talked about Spot.us before on this site. In fact, just over a year ago, we highlighted it as a peek into the future of journalism. Whether or not that prophecy comes true remains to be seen, but this precocious start-up is currently going after the Regents of the University of California.

We've made a lot of hay about the dire financial situation facing the U.C. system. (We already felt justified in doing so, but The New Yorker wrote about it, too, so now we know we're golden.)

Anyway, an interesting pitch regarding public higher education in California is now up on Spot.us, submitted by investigative journalist Peter Byrne. (Video pitch embedded below.)

Byrne wants to find out what the investment committee of the Regents of the U.C. system—which includes California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, and Paul Wachter, a financial advisor to the Governator—is doing with the $53 billion in public funds that it oversees. He's particularly interested in possible conflicts of interest: situations where the movement of a lot of money from the U.C. fund between corporations and investment positions can benefit the Regents personally.