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Keyword: calpers

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  • Infrastructure investors go big

    11/06/2016 8:16:17 AM PST · by Tolerance Sucks Rocks · 3 replies
    Pensions & Investments ^ | October 31, 2016 | Arleen Jacobius
    Pension funds and other asset owners increasingly are investing in U.S. infrastructure, often buying the assets from infrastructure money managers. This could be a win-win. Investor interest comes at a time when the first crop of infrastructure funds raised in the U.S. in 2004 and 2005 are coming to the end of their 10-year life span. Managers are expected to bring more transactions to market to take advantage of growing interest by direct investors. Industry insiders expect more infrastructure core projects to change to institutional investor ownership. Investors prize the core projects, even though returns generally are lower than investments...
  • CalPERS posts worst year since 2009, with slim returns

    07/18/2016 8:56:52 PM PDT · by bkopto · 29 replies
    LA Times ^ | July 18, 2016 | James Koren
    California’s largest public pension fund made a return of less than 1% in its most recent fiscal year, the fund’s worst performance since 2009. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System said Monday that its rate of return for the year ended June 30 was just 0.61%. What’s more, Ted Eliopoulos, the pension fund’s chief investment officer, said the poor year has pushed CalPERS’ long-term returns below expected levels. “We have some challenges to confront,” Eliopoulos said during a conference call. “We’re moving into a much more challenging, low-return environment.” CalPERS assumes that, in the long-term, it will earn investment returns...
  • California pension investment ticks off state engineers’ union

    05/15/2016 12:47:13 AM PDT · by Tolerance Sucks Rocks · 1 replies
    The Sacramento Bee ^ | May 10, 2016 | Jon Ortiz
    Add one more investment to the list of CalPERS’ controversial investments: a privately run state highway. The retirement fund recently purchased 10 percent of Indiana Toll Road Concession Co. The firm runs a 157-mile stretch of highway that runs across northern Indiana from Illinois to Ohio. California’s state engineers’ union says it’s a horrible investment that sinks government employees’ money into a project that, ironically, is hostile to government employees. The toll-road company is the first of what fund managers anticipate will be more investments in infrastructure and transportation projects as the $291 billion system broadens its reach into those...
  • CalPERS learns social responsibility can be a drag

    04/08/2016 7:09:44 AM PDT · by C19fan · 2 replies
    Reuters ^ | April 5, 2016 | Kevin Allison
    CalPERS is learning that social responsibility can be a drag. The $290 billion California pension manager may reinvest in tobacco stocks after a report found that exiting the sector cost it $3 billion of potential investment gains over 15 years. There’s more to the idea than higher returns, though. Engaging financially with controversial firms can be a better way to effect change.
  • More Evidence That CalPERS Board (and Staff?) Does Not Understand Finance

    02/22/2016 1:54:36 PM PST · by Lorianne · 9 replies
    Naked Capitalism ^ | 22 February 2016 | Yves Smith
    This is just scary. As those of you who follow the CalPERS soap opera may recall, California Governor Jerry Brown pushed for the giant pension fund CalPERS to lower its assumed investment return from 7.5% to 6.5%. Given that the world is headed towards deflation and that CalPERS earned only 2.4% for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, Brown’s request seemed entirely reasonable. Instead, the board approved a staff proposal to move to the 6.5% target over 10 years. One of the things that is perverse about pension accounting is that the convention is that the liabilities, that is,...
  • Ron Burkle raised $10 million for the Clintons. Now, he has almost nothing to do with them.

    01/07/2016 5:51:30 AM PST · by Kaslin · 17 replies
    Los Angeles Times ^ | January 7, 2016 | Evan Halper
    As Hillary Clinton and her surrogates scour the country for mega-donors, the one left-leaning billionaire they are not approaching is the one who knows the first couple more intimately than any of the others. Ron Burkle figures that over the years, he's raised about $10 million for the Clintons at his sprawling Beverly Hills estate. After Bill Clinton left the White House, he and Burkle jetted around the world in an unconventional partnership that netted the former president about $15 million and Burkle entree into the palaces and offices of world dignitaries. For years, when Clinton dropped into Los Angeles,...
  • Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues

    07/19/2015 7:44:43 AM PDT · by george76 · 33 replies
    Investment Watch ^ | July 17, 2015 | John Rubino
    Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues, 50% Of Their Cash That Will Have Go To Pensions. [ Full title ]. ... When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring debt, volatile equities and heavy-handed intervention; Japan with its stratospheric debt and science fictiony demographics; Greece, which needs no explanation; the developing countries with their weak currencies and mountain of dollar-denominated debt. And of course America’s triple bubble of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Underfunded...
  • Why CalPERS retirees flee California

    05/13/2015 8:46:48 PM PDT · by artichokegrower · 41 replies
    Sacramento Bee ^ | May 11, 2015 | Jon Ortiz
    This city’s Spanish name recalls grassy, spring-fed meadows that nourished the first farms here and gave laborers relief from desert heat. Now Las Vegas draws a new generation of settlers epitomized by California transplant Joe Beck: CalPERS pensioners who have made Sin City their No. 1 destination for retirement outside California. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article20702106.html#storylink=cpy
  • CalPERS Seeks To Escape Fiscal Reality Of Failing Pensions

    03/11/2015 6:35:26 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 16 replies
    IBD ^ | 03/11/2015 | David Tawil
    To the outsider, CalPERS — the largest U.S. pension fund, created by California state law and run by an arm of the state of California — may seem like the champion of the working man, fighting for the rights of municipal employees and pensioners. But that perception may be undeserved, per the Chapter 9 bankruptcy of Stockton, Calif., where CalPERS sought to shift to taxpayers (an even larger and more sympathetic party than CalPERS) the financial burden to support what some consider CalPERS' outrageous costs. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein openly opined, "CalPERS has bullied its way about in this...
  • Cracks Starting to Appear in Public Pensions’ Armor

    02/25/2015 7:24:29 PM PST · by Brad from Tennessee · 16 replies
    New York Times ^ | February 25, 20015 | By Mary Williams Walsh
    First in Detroit, then in Stockton, Calif., and now in New Jersey, judges and other top officials are challenging the widespread belief that public pensions are untouchable. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey delivered the latest blow on Tuesday, when he proposed to freeze that state’s public pension plans and move workers into new ones intended not to overwhelm future budgets or impose open-ended demands on taxpayers. The first crack came in Detroit, where a judge ruled that public pensions could, in fact, be reduced, at least in bankruptcy. Then, just a few weeks ago, an opinion by the bankruptcy...
  • Bankruptcy Judge Hammers Unions by Allowing Stockton Pension Cut

    10/04/2014 10:22:18 PM PDT · by 2ndDivisionVet · 23 replies
    Breitbart California ^ | October 4, 2014 | Chriss W. Street
    In what will be a devastating blow to California public employee unions, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein ruled in the Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy of the City of Stockton that pensions managed by the California Public Employee Retirement System, known as CalPERS, can be cut in bankruptcy “like any other garden variety” unsecured debt. He rejected the unions’ argument that the world’s largest pension fund is an “arm of the state” and that public employee pensions are protected by federal and state laws. Stockton city employees and city council members, who are all CalPERS pension beneficiaries, received retirement benefit enhancements...
  • Federal judge questions sacredness of government employee pensions

    10/02/2014 9:27:04 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 14 replies
    American Thinker ^ | 10/02/2014 | Thomas Lifson
    When government employees buy the California legislature with huge campaign contributions, one of the benefits they expect in return is absolute protection of the lush pensions they are promised, even when their employer goes into bankruptcy. Thus, California law insists that Calpers, the state-backed agency used to provide many government employees with their pensions, is granted very special powers, including the right to seize assets and liquidate them to provide for full payment of pensions, even when other creditors are paid a penny on the dollar.But yesterday, a federal bankruptcy judge in California issued a preliminary ruling indicating that once...
  • CalPERS gets decision: Judge rules Stockton can sever its city pensions (CA)

    10/01/2014 4:14:40 PM PDT · by aimhigh · 27 replies
    Sacramento Bee ^ | 10/01/2014 | Dale Kasler
    In a potentially groundbreaking decision, a federal bankruptcy judge today struck down the sanctity of government pensions in California, saying the city of Stockton has the right to sever its contract with CalPERS. The verbal ruling from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein, two years after Stockton filed for bankruptcy, was the decision CalPERS longed to avoid.
  • Government Employee Unions Tee Up California's Bankruptcy

    05/17/2014 10:15:08 AM PDT · by SeekAndFind · 6 replies
    Forbes ^ | 05/17/2014 | Bill Frezza
    Half a Billion Dollars. That’s how much the California Teachers Association and the powerful Service Employees International Union have spent on California politics since 2000. The unions’ return on that “investment”? A legislature totally beholden to them for political support and campaign contributions. Here’s another mind-boggling number: Half a Trillion Dollars. That’s an estimate of the unfunded public pension liabilities racked up by California’s state and municipal governments due to overly generous pay and defined benefit pension plans lavished on unionized government employees. If you thought the bankruptcies of Stockton, San Bernardino, and Vallejo were entertaining, break out the popcorn...
  • CalPERS Ex-CEO Buenrostro Guilty Plea Explains Why Bankers Make So Much Money

    07/13/2014 9:29:08 AM PDT · by Lorianne · 5 replies
    Forbes ^ | 13 July 2014 | Tim Worstall
    The ex-CEO of CalPERS, Fred Buenrostro, has just pleaded guilty to accepting doucers, cash bribes and fees for placing investment business with a specific firm. The economic point that this helps us elucidate is why bankers and fund managers make such vast incomes normally. It’s a concept called “efficiency wages”. Essentially, when stripped right down, if people are handling or responsible for a large amount of money then pay them very well. So that it’s not actually worth their trying to do anything naughty, the risk of losing that high income is greater than what they can gain by being...
  • Unions: 'Will that Be Cash, Credit or Corruption?'

    03/17/2014 4:41:21 AM PDT · by Kaslin · 7 replies
    Townhall.com ^ | March 17, 2014 | John Ransom
    While it’s a truism that for every finger you point at someone else you’ve got three pointed right back at you, for liberals it’s part of their laws of physics. It would be impossible for the laws of liberals to govern without this binding hypocrisy that keeps them in orbit. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise you that for all the leftist rhetoric about corporations and greed contributing the decline of the country, there’s one corporate outfit that’s really screwing up this country- and it’s a creation and a creature of the left. Like most Big Left organizations it is...
  • Voters in bankrupt San Bernardino sweep old guard from power

    02/06/2014 9:17:29 AM PST · by Beave Meister · 5 replies
    Reuters ^ | 2/5/2014 | TIM REID
    (Reuters) - Residents of bankrupt San Bernardino, California on Tuesday voted to complete a rout of the city's pro-union old guard, electing business-friendly pragmatists who have pledged to try to reduce pension costs and take on vested interests. As San Bernardino enters into a fourth month of mediation with its creditors, the biggest of which is Calpers, California's giant retirement system, voters on Tuesday elected Carey Davis as the crisis-hit city's new mayor. Davis, a businessman and political novice, ran in part on a campaign to reduce the city's pension obligations. In an interview in November, when he became one...
  • San Bernardino, deemed eligible for bankruptcy, may take knife to pensions

    08/29/2013 7:38:13 AM PDT · by redreno · 37 replies
    http://www.lasvegassun.com ^ | Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2013 | By Jennifer Medina, New York Times News Service
    LOS ANGELES — A federal bankruptcy court judge granted the city of San Bernardino eligibility for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, raising the possibility that the city will propose a plan to dig itself out of debt by cutting money promised to the public pension system. The ruling by Judge Meredith Jury came despite opposition from the powerful California Public Employees’ Retirement System, more commonly known as CalPERS. San Bernardino, a working-class city of 240,000 about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy last summer, saying it had effectively run out of money to pay for day-to-day operations, in...
  • CalPERS Is Hotel California

    04/30/2013 7:17:52 AM PDT · by Texas Eagle · 5 replies
    chrissstreetandcompany.com ^ | April 30, 2013 | Chriss W. Street
    When it comes to public employee pension politics, the Eagles got it right with Hotel California: “You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” The San Jose City Council, facing huge budget deficits tried to honor the will of the people by terminating life-time pension benefits for Council members. But they just learned ending wildly expensive retirement benefits may be wildly more expensive than staying in the plan. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), which manages most public employee retirement benefits in California raised San Jose’s cost of checking-out of the pension plan by 584%.
  • As we predicted, pensions eating up Prop. 30 education funds

    04/29/2013 6:12:28 PM PDT · by massmike · 5 replies
    calwatchdog.com/ ^ | 04/29/2013 | John Seiler
    As Bill Clinton might put it, it’s in the math. In the lead up to the November 6 election last fall, CalWatchDog.com ran several articles on Proposition 30 and pensions. We warned that the $7 billion tax increase would go not to schools, as advertised by Gov. Jerry Brown and others in TV ads, but to teacher pensions and other spending. I’ll quote some below. The news now is that this is exactly what is happening. David Crane, a Democrat who was a budget adviser to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has the facts in a Bloomberg article: “Most Californians would...