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Others Notice That A Long Bull Market Hasn't Improved Public Pension Fundedness  

by meep

I knew you’d get there eventually, y’all!

I saw it both in the WSJ and Pensions&Investment news, and the WSJ piece is somewhat reasonable…. but the P&I bit is something else.

WALL STREET JOURNAL COVERAGE: JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM

I first saw it on...

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Divestment and ESG Follies...and Heroes: YAY for President of Brown University, Oil, and Private Prisons  

by meep

It’s been about 3 weeks since my last divestment-related post, so let me dump a bunch here. There was actually quite a few good results.

Brown University President Rejects Israel Divestment

Brown University’s president has rejected a student-approved referendum calling for the university to divest from companies that conduct business...

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An Ugly Interest Rate Environment and Public Pensions Chasing Returns  

by meep

The Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee (FOMC) had a meeting this past week, and the reactions have been ugly.

This is what I mean by ugly: a yield curve inversion.

The x-axis is years, and the y-axis is the percent rate.

What that graph shows is that the 1-month to...

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Around the Pension-o-Sphere: Jane the Actuary, ESG, California Rule, and More  

by meep

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I’ve built up a bunch of links in my Actuarial Outpost Public Pensions Watch (for 2019), as well as my other pension watch threads, and thought you might be interested in some of the themes I’ve come across.

Most of...

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Chicago Mayoral Race: Screwed No Matter Who You Choose, Thanks to Unfunded Pensions  

by meep

So, I wander onto twitter about once a day, and sometimes I engage, and many times I don’t.

I noticed something from one of the mayoral candidates, Lori Lightfoot. Remember how I said she wasn’t as bad as Preckwinkle? I still think that’s true, from a practical standpoint of how...

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Pritzker's Plan for Illinois Pensions: "Clever" Tricks - POBs, Pay More Later, and Asset Transfer  

by meep

Sigh.

Well, if you’re going to go for the gold, you may as well throw in all the clever tricks.

I will grab from Wirepoints about the main “clever” ideas.

The administration will pursue three of the worst ideas available:

• First, the state will borrow to pay off pension debt by...

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Chicago Mayoral Race: What Do The Candidates Say About Pensions?  

by meep

Don’t worry, I’ll be getting back to the corruption inherent in the system soon enough (I have at least one more topic — the unpaid vendors of Illinois — to cover there).

But there’s a Chicago mayoral race on… Crain’s Chicago Business asked all the candidates the same set of...

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New Jersey: Battle Over Public Finance Between Democrats  

by meep

I will be back to beating up on Illinois and Chicago any minute (maybe let them get warmed up again). I want to pull out an item from Taxing Tuesday, and a few other things courtesy John Bury.

Before I have my say, just a reminder that if you...

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San Diego City ERS Has No Business Giving Out 13th Checks  

by meep

It was brought to my attention that there was a record level 13th check given out to San Diego City (as opposed to county) retirees.

‘13th check’ bonus for retired city employees hits record again

More than $6.7 million went to retired San Diego city employees at the end of November...

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Los Angeles Teacher Strike: Pensions are a Driver  

by meep

I will get to the pensions-specific aspect in a moment.

Here is the basic news of the LA Teachers Strike:

Head of Striking Los Angeles Teachers’ Union Aims to Resume Talks ‘Soon’

The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said he hoped to resume talks “very soon” as a strike...

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