Due to the stock market downturn, public pensions invested in private equity are about to face a reckoning — but thanks to lax transparency regulations, pension members have no way of knowing how bad it might get.
Robbing workers’ pension funds has long been central to Wall Street's business model. A recent Supreme Court ruling opened the door for financial managers to take their looting of those pension funds even further.
Call it the tale of two pension crises. In June, the Los Angeles Times’ business pages looked at the looming retirement savings disaster caused by the nearly 40-year transition from traditional employer-sponsored defined-benefit pensions to individual 401(k) plans — a sea change in retirement insecurity, it noted, that “has been a failure for all but the wealthiest Americans.”
A big chunk of money coming out of Pennsylvania is financing the dog siccers and the pepper sprayers -- including tax dollars. It turns out that one of the major investors in Energy Transfer Partners is...the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Records show that as of this June, the commonwealth -- through its pension funds -- owned some 5 million shares of ETP -- valued at some $192 million. That's more than any other governmental or quasi-governmental agency.
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