David Crane, a lecturer at Stanford and a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the bringer of bad news. For more than a decade, Mr. Crane, a San Francisco Democrat and former investment banker, has been forecasting a disaster in California’s pension system. He was removed from the board of directors that oversees benefits paid to California’s teachers after repeatedly warning that the fund’s investment assumptions were too rosy, and since then has continued to scream about a coming financial reckoning.
