Maryland Shift of Pension Cash to Wall Street Delivered Below-Median Results: Study

Maryland has joined a not-very-exclusive club: States that have moved pension funds into riskier Wall Street investments and received, in return, below-median results. That underperformance by Maryland's $40 billion public pension fund cost state taxpayers more than $1 billion in unrealized returns in fiscal year 2014 alone, according to a new study by Jeffrey Hooke, a former investment banker, and the Maryland Public Policy Institute's John Walters.