I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
New Mexico’s permanent endowment trust funds took a beating in the stock market between March and June, losing three-quarters of a billion dollars.
The state Land Grant Permanent Fund, the state’s largest endowment, lost 6.4 percent of its value — a half-billion dollars — between March and June, State Investment Council (SIC) spokesman Charles Wollman told The Independent Monday.
The fund is now valued at approximately $9.5 billion, Wollman said.
Capital for the endowment comes from lease revenues from state lands, which are then invested by the SIC. In fiscal year 2009, the endowment distributed more than $523 million, mostly to New Mexico public schools, according to the SIC website. The public schools own 80 percent of the land fund, Wollman said.
The state’s Severance Tax Permanent Fund lost 7.1 percent in that period as well — nearly a quarter-billion dollars, according to an AP report on Monday. Established by the state Legislature in 1973, severance tax fund capital is raised from natural resource extraction on state lands, and is used to help pay off debts from bond sales for capital projects, according to the SIC website.
“It wasn’t a great quarter for us,” Wollman said.
International markets did much worse, Wollman was quick to add.
“The S&P 500 dropped 11.4 percent last quarter, and international markets declined 13.3 percent,” Wollman said. “In practical terms, (the land fund declines) mean absolutely nothing for the schools, because the distributions we provide are based on a five-year rolling average. I understand that for July, the stock market rally basically caught us up to flat for the year-to-date. July was a good month and we recouped a lot of those earlier losses.”
Dispersals from the fund have been “steadily increasing” despite the recession, Wollman said. “We won’t see a drop until March 2013 … when we’ll see a $30 million (drop).”
A constitutional amendment required the SIC temporarily gradually raise distributions from the land fund from 5 percent to 5.8 percent of the fund’s five-year average value, but the percentages will begin to drop back down toward 5 percent starting in 2013, Wollman explained.
If July’s rally continues, the fund could be up slightly for the year.
“(For) a fund as big as ours, losing or gaining $100 million (a) day is not unusual at all, depending on the level of market activity,” Wollman said.
