The Wall Street Journal posted a story about Orange County's pension
fund, gloating that it outperformed the supposedly union dominated
California state pension fund: CALPERS.
Jim Carlton and Tamara Audi. 2009. "Orange County Dodged Bullet by a
Avoiding Calpers: Southern California Locale Decided to Stick with Its
Small Pension Fund in 2006." (16 October): p. A 4.
"Orange County had a chance three years ago to join the California
Public Employees' Retirement System. Instead, county leaders stayed with
a small Orange County pension fund, and now they feel vindicated for
their stay-local strategy. While Calpers's investments went on to lose
almost 30% of their value during the crash of financial markets last
year, the Orange County Employees Retirement System, or Ocers, lost only
21%."
"Now that Calpers has revealed that a former board member allegedly
reaped $50 million in fees for arranging investments that could saddle
state taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, those in
Orange County who once lobbied to ditch Ocers are even happier their
side lost the debate."
"Calpers, whose board is dominated by union ties, has invested much more
aggressively in equities."
In fact CALPERS lost big by investing in real estate and hedge funds.
Also, Orange County had a curious investment history, when in 1994, its
treasurer, Robert Citron, lost heavily investing in derivatives, which
he did not understand. The county went bankrupt.
Of course, treasurers were expected to make big bucks as a way to keep
taxes down. This sort of pressure still continues.
Read more at:
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/pension-fund-fraud-the-wall-street-journal-vs-unions/
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929
530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
