Randomly Noted

Score one for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. The country’s largest public pension fund won in its scrimmage with Apple Inc. about how Apple directors get to stay on board.

Apple shareholders voting at the company’s annual meeting today backed a CalPERS-offered proposal that asks the board of directors to jump on the majority voting bandwagon.

“An election where you can be voted in without a majority is unworthy of a great company like Apple,” said Anne Simpson, CalPERS’ senior portfolio manager who heads its corporate governance program, in a press release. “We strongly urge Apple to make the change that its owners are requesting.”

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To those fretting about the very real budget problems of U.S. cities and states, their difficulty in fulfilling  financial promises they made and the implications of all that for the market in tax-free bonds, here’s a number that might offer a measure of reassurance. 72. Or, if you like, 77.

These numbers represent the percentages, respectively, of the number of polled New Yorkers who support the tough budget proposal of the state’s new Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, and the percentage who have a favorable view of him. (The source is the Siena Research Institute.)

That’s New York, the fabled liberal state. Across the river in New Jersey, the controversial Republican governor, Chris Christie, is lighting into government worker benefit and retirement plans that threaten the state’s fiscal future.

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The U.S.’s largest public pension funds reports further progress in its useful quest to get more publicly traded companies to adopt majority voting for directors.

Simply put, majority voting requires a director in an uncontested election to receive more “for” votes from shareholders than “withhold” votes to continue to serve on the board of directors.

The 58 companies targeted in March 2010 by The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) were holding onto the plurality system. Under that system, a single “for” vote could re-elect a director.

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There are facts. There is political reality. As those two clash, it won’t come out well for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC’s chairman, Mary L. Schapiro, marshalled facts in a speech today, hitting hard that the watchdog agency needs more money to modernize to fulfill its role, especially in light of the additional responsibilities handed the SEC by the Dodd-Frank Act.

The reality is the SEC had better review all its operations, set its priorities and stop some things so it can do others well. The top priorities should be enforcement and watching ever-more-sophisticated stock market patterns.  Other functions, such as investor education, will have to fall by the wayside.

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The incongruity wasn’t lost on the Federal Reserve chairman or the crowd.

“But before asking the last question, a couple of very important matters to take care of,” intoned the moderator at Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s rare press conference today in Washington at the National Press Club. “Want to remind our members and guests of future speakers. Harry Shearer, the comedian and humorist, a voice of ‘The Simpsons,’ will discuss media myths on March 14.

“And we might even try to get him to do a few voices for us,” the moderator added, according to a transcript.

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If the battle over U.S. government spending and what to do about outsized federal deficits were decided by which side has the best quotes, score a point for the deep-budget-cut-now types.

The quote is from Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, who is considered a possible Republican presidential hopeful for 2012. I read it this morning in an email roundup from Mike Allen of POLITICO. A quick search shows Pawlenty had been using the thrust of the quote often as he speaks publicly, sometimes promoting his just published book.

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A quote from Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric who was just tabbed by President Obama to lead a government council on job creation, sums up quite well a key aspect of the  American economic dilemma.

“The assumption made by many that the United States could transition from a technology based, export-oriented economic powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy without any serious loss of jobs, prosperity or prestige was fundamentally wrong,” Immelt wrote in an “op-ed” piece in today’s Washington Post.

I’ll take issue with one aspect of the quote: the implication that someone planned it that way, that someone thought this was a good idea. The transition, which threatens the long-standard American advantage of a broad and robust midlle class, was the result of market forces. Globalization works all sorts of ways.

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Every great government institution deserves a nickname. The U.S. Senate has been called the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” The House of Representatives is referred to as the “People’s House.”

True, these terms of endearment also have been much used ironically and cynically, depending on what’s been going on in those storied institutions. But, through thick and thin, the nicknames have lasted.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas may have on Wednesday, presumably without planning, come up with a terrific nickname, or at least a nickname idea, for the U.S. Federal Reserve. Richard W. Fisher spoke of the need to protect the integrity of our “delicate franchise.”

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If you are looking to make a contrarian macroeconomic bet in 2011, how about this one: real progress will be made in the U.S. at the federal and state level on reducing large, structural budget deficits.

I know it is a doozy. And I did say contrarian, which means if you believe it most people will say you are crazy. But contrarian sometimes does happen.

It’s pretty easy to build a case against deficit-cutting progress. Sky-high budget deficits at the federal level were just recently met by continued tax cuts, which makes the deficit worse. Messing with Social Security or Medicare still means flirting with the ‘third rail’ of American politics. State and city promises to retired workers are massive and underfunded. A divided government in Washington promises nothing but hostility and inaction.

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The U.S. footbal analogy is this: the Federal Reserve is like a runner who has picked up a lot of yards, but now wants to lateral the ball to another runner. The question is whether that second runner is available and what he will do with the ball.

A tortured analogy. Guilty as charged. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher prefers maritime analogies.

The Fed “has helped raise the tide” he told Dow Jones Newswires reporter Michael Derby today in a video interview broadcast via WSJ.com. But a lot of U.S. employers’ boats’ “are still tied to the dock or they’ve sailed to foreign ports,” where the regulatory climate is presumed to be more favorable.

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