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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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Bye Bye 2018 - And the 80 Percent Funding Myth Persists  

by meep

Ugh. What a year. I’m beat.

It also doesn’t help that I just slogged through the end of War and Peace (because I had to get it done by 6am this morning when the audiobook was going poof).

One of the things that was a positive for 2018 is that...

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Checking the Numbers: How Much are Social Security Benefits?  

by meep

No, I’m not addressing the affordability of the program, etc.

I’m looking at: how much are people actually paid in Social Security benefits

Luckily, the Office of the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration has lots of information so we can get a good idea. I went here, clicked through...

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Mornings with Meep: Data Visualization  

by meep

I review three books on data visualization, and try out a couple visualizations using some of the ideas from the first book, Storytelling with Data.

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Alternative Assets and Pension Performance: A Dive into Data  

by meep

As promised in a prior post, I’m going to be digging into the many dimensions that drive public pension deteriorating status.

I have a news hook for this:

Pa. treasurer says ‘we have seen this movie before’ as pension system shifts toward costly hedge funds:

Pennsylvania’s $30 billion state pension fund...

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New Project(s): Re-visualizing the Public Pension Database  

by meep

I’ve taken the data from the Public Pension Database and put it on kaggle – while I hope this will get a few other people dipping into this data, it’s more that I can put together some notebooks that others can get and look at….using tools a bit cooler...

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Happy Halloween! Some Scary Public Pension Projections  

by meep

Do you want to see something really scary?

I have updated my public pension cash flow projection spreadsheet. You can get a copy of the latest version here.

I ran the 170 plans with updated data up to (possibly) fiscal year 2016, using data from the Public Plans Database.

The...

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Geeking Out (and Illinois Pensions): Fixing a Graph and Assigning Blame for Underfundedness  

by meep

I used a graph last week that I knew was wrong (well, part of it was wrong).

It’s my graph of the unfunded liabilities of the 5 Illinois state-funded pension plans, and how it stacks up over time. I know I’ve mentioned this issue before — it doesn’t work well...

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Public Pensions: Why Do 100% Required Contribution Payers Have Decreasing Fundedness?  

by meep

In yesterday’s post, I looked at the press release from a public pensions advocacy group.

One key point was this quote from the paper the press release pointed to:

Pension funds are resilient and well managed. They have stood the test of time for more than 100 years through...

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Rhode Island Pensions: Asset Trends  

by meep

As noted in the prior post, there are two state-level pension funds in the Public Plans Database for Rhode Island, the plan for state employees and the plan for municipal plans — it’s the second one that is involved in the proposed legislation.

Now, I can do...

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