“With everything that’s going on, nobody really knows the rules of the game at this second,” said Marc Green, CIO of the $48.7 billion Alabama Retirement Systems, Montgomery, at a recent board meeting, referencing market uncertainty stemming from the policies of the Trump administration.
“From the CEO level all the way down to the consumer level, you’re seeing people just retrenching right now,” Green added at the March 11 board meeting for the Employees’ Retirement System, one of the pension funds in the retirement system. “I think when the rules of the game change every day, or every hour, that’s just human nature.”
In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, the president’s slew of executive orders, tariff moves and federal workforce changes led by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” have caused uncertainty both in the markets and elsewhere.
“At some point, he's (the president’s) going to feel the pressure” from CEOs, Green predicted.
“You need some sort of certainty to be able to make an informed decision if you’re a CEO of a company. And right now, nobody’s making any big decisions,” Green said.
The pension fund is responding to the uncertainty as well, he noted, adding that “we’ve got some bullets to shoot, but we’re not really ready to pull the trigger yet on adding to equities.”
“As hard as we try to know what's going on in the future, right now, we're absolutely flying blind in my opinion,” CEO David Bronner said at the meeting.
Bronner specifically criticized Musk and his efforts to slash the federal government’s spending through controversial cuts at federal agencies.
"There's a lot of things to be done, and you can do them with a scalpel, or you can do it with a sledgehammer," Bronner said. "But when you're dealing with all of these things at one time, the public isn’t going to accept it very well."
He also called out Musk for his comments about Social Security in the Oval Office on Feb. 11 when the Tesla CEO told reporters there are people in the Social Security system that are 150 years old.
“Making up facts, stating to the public that you have … people that are 125 or 150 years old still getting a check — it's just nonsense,” Bronner said.
