John Arnold: Enron’s Anti-Pension Crusader
Former Enron trader and hedge fund billionaire John Arnold may be about to launch a national publicity campaign to convince U.S. voters of the need to reform public pensions, according to a document seen by Reuters.
Arnold, who has given tens of millions of dollars to politicians and groups backing reforms of public pension plans in over a dozen states since 2008, is viewed by some labor unions as an enemy out to destroy their members’ promised retirement benefits, something Arnold fiercely denies. He says he wants to find long-term structural solutions, fair to all parties, to bring fiscal sanity to public pensions.
His $1.3 billion philanthropic organization solicited bids for a national pension reform campaign of public relations with an April launch date, according to a Request for Proposals document dated September 19, 2014, that has been reviewed by Reuters. Arnold has bankrolled pension reform efforts in many individual states in recent years, with mixed success. He has repeatedly said he views the underfunding of many public pension systems as a major fiscal and public policy crisis that needs addressing.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
