Hedge funds were often the rage. Not so much now.

You may recall I wrote about CALPERS, the biggest employee pension fund, was rethinking its investments in hedge funds.

It’s spreading, per The Wall Street Journal (pay wall):

Pension-fund managers across the U.S. are rethinking their investments in hedge funds in the wake of a retreat by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

In San Francisco, the chairman of that city’s pension fund has put on hold a vote to invest 15% of its assets in hedge funds. In Austin, Texas, officers responsible for the retirement savings of city police officers are discussing whether to withdraw all of their hedge-fund investments. In Harrisburg, Pa., a prominent state official asked the systems that manage money for teachers and other public workers to reconsider the $7.6 billion parked in such investments.

“We need to be talking about this,” Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said in an interview.

The new conversations were spurred by Calpers, the largest U.S. public pension fund, which last month decided to shed its entire $4 billion in hedge-fund investments over the next year. Calpers said the investments were too small a slice of its $298 billion portfolio to justify the time and expense they required.