One of the nation’s largest public pension funds says it is looking to buy assets which are a part of the U.S. government’s $700 billion program to help banks sell off the illiquid investments.

Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is setting aside “billions of dollars” during the current credit crisis and is ready to spend, said Henry Jones, a Calpers board of administration member, in an interview with Bloomberg.

He said there is a “glimmer of hope” in to stock market.

The pension fund is looking to buy “some of the assets of these financial companies such as Citi and the others, assets that they’re trying to get off their balance sheets,” he said.

The market has changed in recent months, he noted.

“The assumptions that we used 18 months ago no longer fit the present market,” he noted. “There’s still a tremendous ocean of toxic debt out there. Even if we didn’t buy it, it’s done enough damage to our banks to affect all of us on Wall Street.”

Calpers has lost more than a quarter of its value in the seven initial months of its fiscal year. The fund was worth $175 billion in assets as of Monday, Bloomberg reported.

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