[At-Large] ICANN Keeps it Money in a Non-Interest Bearing Account!

[Bill Silverstein]

>
> Actually, it sounds like ICANN has learned their lesson.  A few years
> back, ICANN made an incredibly irresponsible decision to place $25 million
> of reserve funds in a broker managed stock market account, which became
> $20 million when the market burped.  Oops.  At the time ICANN's CFO
> refused to take any responsibility or to admit that they'd screwed up, or
> to explain why they'd needed $25 million of registrants' money for the
> reserve if, as he now claimed, $20M was enough.

No, it sounds like they are still stupid!

>
> I hope we all agree that ICANN's primary reponsibility toward its reserves
> is to be sure that the money is there when it's needed.  That means
> something with no credit risk, like US government treasury bills, which
> are currently yielding 0.16% for six month bills and 0.18% for twelve
> months.  When you subtract off even the most modest broker fees, that
> rounds to zero, so I can't blame them for just putting it in a zero
> interest account on which they can draw as needed.

There are many non-zero interest, no risk accounts.
>
> What were you expecting them to do?  Do you think it is possible to find
> suitable low-risk investments that pay significantly more?

American Express has a savings account which provides close to .98%. .98%
of $352.3M is $3,452,540 per year. Or even a CitiGold checking account,
you'd get .1% which wold still be $352,300/year.








>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
> Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
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