CSG recently teamed up with long-time industry colleague James Pruskowski to write a piece about where catalytic capital begins and institutional footprints can cement impact in the public finance space. James ran the institutional muni portfolio at Blackrock for decades before joining 16 Rock Asset Management last year - a group of veteran portfolio managers. With no financial interest in 16 Rock or stand to gain anything else really, co-authoring with their tested insight into the marketplace was valuable as CSG does not manage a portfolio of investments.

The process of putting this together helped to clarify a lot of unfinished purportedly good ideas around what makes public finance and impact a proper alignment. It is not in-depth disclosure about climate risk (the S.E.C. won’t be a driver of change and is a waste of time) we think to have impact cross-over to mainstream it boils down to traditional financial risk and return assessment and aligning established interests with impact in ways not already explored. Simple concepts that healthy people cost less and are more economically productive, or that there are already massive muni buyers out there that can make small adjustments and have an outsized effect on communities nationwide. This is where we can find common ground between where catalytic and philantrhopric big picture ideas and the ‘establishment’ of public finance.

The Bond Buyer published our joint output and you can read our thoughts in this week’s Community Finance Brief.