The State of the States

Laguna Beach, CA - August 2-5, 2009

America is a country of 50 states, but with all the attention being devoted to Washington, the story of the states can sometimes get overlooked. How are the states handling the current crisis? What are the solutions being developed at the state level? When it comes to infrastructure, what do the states have to say? What is happening in real estate beyond the headlines? How does immigration look? Will regulation by the states mesh with or clash with federal regulation?

Human capital, everyone agrees, is one of the keys to America's future, and yet do we really have a good grasp on where health care reform is actually going? Clean energy is vital to every one of the fifty states and the whole world, but how do investors begin to make it happen on a sufficiently broad scale?

As we take a close look state-by-state and distill our collective wisdom on the major questions of the day, we also need to place that knowledge into a global context. Will the Mexican and U.S. economies become ever more closely intertwined? Why did the Canadian banking system manage the crisis so well and what lessons can America learn from Canada? Going forward, will emerging markets like China, India, Russia and Brazil still be key places where money can be made, and if so how? Will private equity find renewed vigor in these markets as well as domestically? How do we get private equity capital calls right? Amid all the expanded talk about due diligence in the hedge fund sector and beyond, what are the best practices to follow?

World Pension Forum invites the pension fund and institutional investor community to Laguna Beach, California to tell us what is happening in your state and compare notes on all the big issues — regulation, health care, clean energy, immigration, infrastructure and real estate.