California Teachers Cut Their Commodities Gamble

California's teachers are helping lead the way in recognizing that gambling on hunger is a way to lose your money -- and to hurt the world's poorest people. Last Thursday, the California teacher's pension fund, CalSTRS, which had been considering putting a whopping $2.5 billion-with-a-b into food and other commodity speculation, decided to downsize that by 94 percent after numerous advocacy groups, including the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Food First, and Pax Christi, pointed out the financial and moral drawbacks. The groups sent the pension fund a letter noting that commodity futures-based speculations'