FOR PUBLICATION: Ed Ring Response to CalPERS' disastrous 2015-16 earnings report

By Will Swaim
07/18/2016
For Immediate Publication July 18, 2016 California Policy Center Contact: Will Swaim Will@CalPolicyCenter.org (714) 573-2231 Latest earnings report is more evidence California retirement agency will reform or die By Ed Ring | California Policy Center The officials who run California’s public-employee retirement system should have released today’s earnings report with sound effects – a flugelhorn, maybe,...

TAGS: CalPERS, pension funds

Aggregate U.S. Pension Data Shows Grim Outlook

By Mike Shedlock
08/31/2015
Editor’s Note:  This analysis by economics blogger Mike Shedlock clearly shows why government employee pensions are taking an awful risk by continuing to forecast annual investment returns of 7.0% or more per year. In his first chart Shedlock points out how between 2008 and 2014 the aggregate value of state and local government worker pension...

TAGS: pension fund insolvency, pension funds

Desalination Plants vs. Bullet Trains and Pensions

By Edward Ring
04/07/2015
Current policy solutions enacted to address California’s water crisis provide an object lesson in how corruption masquerading as virtue is impoverishing the general population to enrich a handful of elites. Instead of building freeways, expanding ports, restoring bridges and aqueducts, and constructing dams, desalination plants, and power stations, California’s taxpayers are pouring tens of billions...

TAGS: "bullet train", California drought, cost of living, desalination, high speed rail, pension funds

Pension Funds and the Ultimate Hedge, Taxpayers

By Edward Ring
03/17/2015
“We’re trying to make these guys’ money toxic because, as we’ve seen, their money is toxic,” Jonathan Westin, the director of New York Communities for Change, told Business Insider on Thursday. “I think it’s connecting the dots that many people don’t always connect.” –  “Activists think they found a way to convince Democrats to stay...

TAGS: Dark money, government pension funds, government unions, pension funds

The Amazing, Obscure, Complicated and Gigantic Pension Loophole

By Edward Ring
11/18/2014
“The bottom line is that claiming the unfunded liability cost as part of an officer’s compensation is grossly and deliberately misleading.” – LAPPL Board of Directors on 08/07/2014, in their post “Misuse of statistics behind erroneous LA police officer salary claims.” This assertion, one that is widely held among representatives of public employees, lies at the...

TAGS: normal contribution, pension funds, pension reform, PEPRA, Public Employee Pension Reform Act, unfunded contribution

Public Pension Solvency Requires Asset Bubbles

By Edward Ring
04/29/2014
The title of this post expresses what is probably the greatest example of a monstrous hypocrisy – that public employee unions, and the pension funds they control, are supposedly helping the American economy, and protecting the American people from “the bankers.” Overpriced “bubble” assets caused by banks offering low interest rates hurt ordinary working people...

TAGS: American Federation of Teachers, CalPERS, CalSTRS, low interest rates, pension funds, Public sector pensions

Government Unions Attack Free-Market Nonprofits via Pension Funds

By Edward Ring
04/08/2014
“The AFT will be looking more closely at those who are supporting the dismantling of defined benefit plans at the state and municipal level.” –  Ranking Asset Managers, A Retirement Security Report on Money Managers for Pension Fund Trustees, March 5, 2014 As reported in a Washington Examiner editorial on April 4th, the American Federation...

TAGS: American Federation of Teachers, Dark money, pension funds, public sector unions