Horror show in Rhode Island
Steve Jobs super yacht cost approximately $200 million while screwed up tax policy favoring the wealthy is leaving rest of us with less money than they were making $30 years ago.
“Concerning pension ‘reform’ in Rhode Island” Elaine Magliaro, a guest blogger on Jonathan Yurley’s blog, says it all. Wall Street gorging on state employees pensions. Here’s some excerpts”
There’s no prudent, disciplined investment program at work here—just a blatant Wall Street gorging, while simultaneously pruning state workers’ pension benefits. It’s no surprise that some of Wall Street’s wildest gamblers have backed her so-called pension reform efforts in the state legislature. Former Enron energy trader emerges as a leading advocate for prudent management of state worker pensions? That’s more than a little ironic.
What’s happened to date in Rhode Island is unprecedented in public pension history and, given the myriad risks involved, should be setting off alarms: A little-known money manager hired by the state’s pension to manage a paltry $5 million succeeded in getting herself elected as state Treasurer. That means she’s now responsible for overseeing the entire $7 billion.
Essentially, there has been a coup—the foxes (money managers) have taken over management of the henhouse (the pension). To make matters worse, she’s an unproven veteran of the “alternative” investment industry—the hallmark of which is a profound lack of transparency…
I’m all for public pension reform—prudent contributing and investing coupled with sustainable benefits. However, when alternative investment managers take control of a state pension and recklessly dump pension assets into high-cost, high-risk alternative investments, while they slash workers’ benefits, that’s no reform. Call it what it is: a money grab.
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