The New York Times has a reporter ( Patrick McGeehan) who has shown more concern for the pension funds of New York City's public sector workers and demonstrated a profoundly better understanding of the rape of those funds than the leader of the NYC teachers union.
Mr. Michael Mulgrew leader of the NYC teachers union has looked over the ten year performance of his members fund and found it to be "performing well". Mulgrew notes that some of the fees charged for overseeing the pension fund are "ridiculous"... and they need to be addressed if those managers are to keep their posts. Keep their posts?
Digest and hold those thoughts, if you will; the phrases "performing well" and expecting improved performance from the Wall Street agents who managethose funds.
Let's read McGeehan's article ...and meet again below the fold..
http://www.nytimes.com/...
and contemplate my "agents" performance...and whose agents actually deserve those big bucks.
http://www.otpp.com/...
I have emailed Mr McGeehan ( he doesn't capitalize the "g" but my computer thinks it knows better) and congratulated him, and I hope emboldened him.. and I hope not scooped him. I have also emailed the core of the contents of my page here with the "2nd layer" of NYC teachers union officials just in case the top level is as shamelessly undedicated to its membership (i.e. - complicit in theft) as it seems.
So what we seem to have here is an "unintended" transfer of real pension system "wealth and assets". A transfer of wealth from hard working New Yorkers in the public sector to Wall Street wise guys who charged fees for the services they have demonstrably not provided.
Let me disclose my interest here. I do not know one single teacher or union official in NY city. But I am a beneficiary of a well run public sector pension plan.. superbly run by professional investment managers who treat funds contributed by people who make from 30 g's to 100 g's per month. These people BUY their retirement income with their earned money...and entrust "money market" people to do their best with. With me?
Can we return to the mantra...."performing well"? Can we revisit the notion of keeping the same money managers on task if they just pull up the socks and reduce those ridiculous fees?
Those "ridiculous fees" pretty much gut a decades worth of pension plan earnings.
As you will see,.... me..., the retired Canadian teacher from the suburbs of Toronto who now lives in the suburbs of L.A. also collects a teachers pension and my anger about what has happened to my NYC colleagues is ... palpable.
I retired rather early back in 2002. My board of education was happy to offer early retirement to $60g+ teachers to replace us with $35g rookies and make me a ward of my pension plan and get us off their books.
If I felt ANY GUILT about collecting a comfortable pension after a mere 32 years of service in the trenches with adolescents.. I used the following self justifiers. ( I was raised Canadian Presbyterian and I will toss my guilt feelings into any Catholic or Jewish pot and raise them one.)
1) I paid in .. big time. Pension contributions were hefty.(Ok, a fraction of my take.)
2) A surprising number of my close colleagues died in service or very early into retirement and never or barely drew out after being in the category above (1)... and that itself was factored in to calculations. ugh!!
( I was going to salute them in first names.. when I realized how many they were.)
3) Why can't I milk the system? Lots of others do in ways more gauche than I could even contemplate.
What I never allowed myself, until now, (thank you so much Patrick McGeehan) was self awareness. I bought into an investment fund. Like a capitalist. Like a GOP Romney / Bain Capital kind of guy. Like a pathetic minor league version of a Buffet or a Koch ... but some of my earned money was sent out into the world at large to come home with "earnings".
To compare the 10 year performance of the NYC teachers, firefighters and police officers pension plans with the performance of Ontario's teachers is to raise question that go way beyond "wiser and less wise investments". If NYC was at 25% of Ontario's performance..? maybe. But NYC has stagnated...as good as a loss.. while your "regulated neighbours" who lack that Wall Street magic.... have my pension covered until my 105th birthday and beyond. Eat my shorts? Please read my pensions "reader friendly" annual report ... and ask serious questions.
My custodians of my dollars worked for me. They "done good". My earned dollars were invested wisely and very, very, profitably in middle class comfort terms. My pension fund is now vested at 105% of ALL anticipated future liability... and growing.
The market is working and can work for a social democratic (mixed economy) Bernie Sanders fan like myself. Like the "official" GOP litany... I could live on my investment returns. But unlike the unofficial GOP litany.... my pension funds weren't an idle pool of capital ripe for sharks to steal. This is why the USA is not Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, France, Germany, England, Denmark, ... but that's OK. Americas rank and file working folks, from students to retirees are a strategic target for fleecing.
( A Canadian thought - If both parts of a mixed economy... the "free market capitalist part" and the "state-owned utility" part are run with honesty and integrity you get "social development" and a positive view of society and civilization. But if every transaction in your life becomes someone else's opportunity to take an unearned, undeserved chunk, to exploit, to shave off or confiscate in fine print scams created by "creative legislation" somehow labeled as FREEDOM.. you are fostering social disintegration.) Go Elizabeth Warren!
Does this kind of economics shame or haunt the "CitiBofaPayDayLoan" execs? Does living off investment returns trouble them? I think not.
But I think those guys ran off with an as yet unmeasured share of my New York City confreres funds.
Did I get off topic? OK .. I will be back to expand on these themes.
I picked up on a vibe from the Daily Show this week. Did you notice that Jon Stewart raised his own bar and as he went to commercial breaks he just laid down the best dose of my favourite emotion.... righteous indignation.
Allow me to share parts of my email correspondence with the NY Times Patrick McGeehan and the 2nd level of NYC Teachers Union execs... I just can't tell if the top layer is just stupid...or in on the game.
___ Me to the Vice Presidents of the NYC UFT
Dear Colleagues:
URGENT:
I am a retired teacher from the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, now resident in California. I never served at any higher level than my secondary school's branch president in my county/district of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation. Our federation, combined with Catholic, French Language, and Elementary teachers federations negotiated for, and worked with, the government of Ontario, (usually Conservative ) to build and manage the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. ( OTTP ) I'd pass along survey results about negotiating priorities from my school's teachers.. but never served on the board-wide negotiating team.
Call me a "moderately active" teachers union member. I never rose to your level of influence. You appear to be the next generation of UFT at your website.
But I am driven to call upon each of your to exercise your personal due diligence, and your elective responsibility to demand the highest level of accountability about who allowed an enormous theft of your teachers' pensions value.. and accountability from those who were supposed to be monitoring your pension plans interests. This request of YOU is going public.
I am not sending a copy of this email to your President Mulgrew although you may feel free to share it with him. Many of the details of this letter are soon to appear in an article at Daily Kos online and are triggered by the New York Times article by Patrick McGeehan that I suspect you are familiar with. I am encouraging McGeehan and the Times to dig much deeper into this alarming transfer of hard-earned teachers assets to the utterly suspect money managers working for themselves.
In case not... PLEASE read:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
This item includes the following quote ( or perhaps characterization..?)
"Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said he was happy that his union’s pension fund, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York, had been performing well. But he said the fees paid to some managers were “ridiculous” and should be renegotiated if those managers are retained."
If you are reading this email without having read McGeehan's NY Times article ... this might be a good time to open it .. and digest with your essay marking pen in hand. And then return. Or just trust me... your choice.
This statement from Mulgrew is, to this outside observer, equivalent to a restaurant customer saying that substandard plate of spaghetti was "kinda good enough" ... but that $750 corkage fee for bringing our own cheap Chianti to the table was.. "ridiculous". The restaurant is ...performing well.
The following statements could be described as "my opinion" in the same way the media in the USA seems to think that the scientific findings of highly educated earth scientists about geologic strata and dating ... and the world is 6000 years old is another "opinion".
1. One might assume that, by having better access to "Wall Street" expertise, your pension plan might out-perform a less sophisticated money market. Wrong, Wrong and So, so, so, Wrong. So pathetically wrong that UTF's pension vigilance is an embarrassment to organized professional teachers in this hemisphere.
2. Handing over, holus-bolus, the already lame and pathetic "growth of assets" in your portfolio in fees to managers ... is a form of treason to your teachers and the other public employees in New York City. You have had your pockets picked by your agents. That sounds like an opinion. Test it. It is a fact.
3. Allowing New York teachers to have.. THEIR contributions.. to THEIR own pension plan's very strength and depth.. putter around in neutral or worse... while financial whiz kids walk off with all of the weak tea earnings they sort of .. kind of.. generated is be treasonous to your constituency.. your colleagues. That sounds like an opinion.
(They will claim later..that private sector pensions are wayy better than public sector after they KILL YOUR public sector PENSIONS through malfeasance.)
Go Ahead! Test it. Here in L.A. County, Los Angeles USA, where I am retired I received my annual report from the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan in my email. Read it and weep. Let's assume that under some moderately professional financial management that UTF earned a mere 25% of what Ontario's teachers accrued in the same period... I assume that your Mr Mulgrew would be apologizing for the embarrassment of riches that NYC teachers have socked away.
http://www.otpp.com/...
Too disinterested to open the link? 16.3 billion in 2014 earnings.
Annualized earnings since 1990... 10.2%
Current holdings 154 billion CDN $ up from 90 billion post 2008 INDUCED crash.
Ontario Teachers are pleasantly surprised and proud of their pension fund.. and it's exceptional quality is something you might admire.. strive for... emulate. If your pension managers can't get you any improvements over 10 years.... IF you pension managers walk off with your weak earning... IF your pension managers can't muster up a wee fraction of the Ontario performance... who are you paying.
What are you paying for. Please rethink Mr Mulgrew's comment as reported in the NY Times. "Performing Well" is so much like President George W Bush's "Mission Accomplished"
If you don't investigate your current leadership and its financial agents how will you look to your teachers when this story goes viral hot and national?
I know absolutely none of you... no New York teachers, union officials. I am not some stalking horse for any candidacy. I haven't a clue, currently about how and when your exec is elected... but I am calling for a wide and general insurgency and I simply hope that the second level of UTF leadership is a bit less invested in the status quo.
Sometimes you simply have to tell the dazed and confused crying coed in the dorm corridor ... yeah ..from what you tell me.... I think you were raped.
Ask yourselves how this happened. You haven't lost 2 billion in fees. You've been deprived of financial management that has cost you TENS OF BILLIONS OF US DOLLARS. You are rape victims. If you don't send a trusted executive member to visit OTTTP in Toronto and get them to look at your books... you are unprofessional, and unworthy of the trust of your colleagues.
Some people ought to be taken down at the firm who manages your funds. You have been badly victimized. Whether some of your own UTF leadership needs to go with them... is up to you. You are the up-and-comers, I hope. This is how America's upper strata within the top 1% walks off with all the winnings.
It leaves us from other nations in the "free world" your government claims to lead... aghast and appalled at your simple-minded surrender to the next generation of ENRON guys.
I extend to you my best wishes and hopes for redress, successful lawsuits, RICO investigations if necessary..and maybe a whole 4% annual return on the 160 billion fund that you and the first responders share. (and I hope those feelings never descend to contempt for gutless acceptance of systematic plundering by people far wealthier than any teacher or UTF official. They are suppose to work FOR YOU. (If you need cahones.... I will send $ for transplants.) The destruction of the American middle class does NOT have to be voluntary.
I've written this entire rant as a teacher to teachers. This crime includes the "first responders" too? OMG Really?
Tired of my Rant? I am. So here is your moment of ZEN.
"Over the last 10 years, the return on those “public asset classes” has surpassed expectations by more than $2 billion, according to the comptroller’s analysis. But nearly all of that extra gain — about 97 percent — has been eaten up by management fees, leaving just $40 million for the retirees, it found."
That's 40 million... not 40 BILLION.
.... (((( ABOUT 97% ))))) (( ABOUT 97% )) (((ABOUT 97% .... ((((ABOUT 97% ABOUT 97% )))))
Let the Ignomy RING !!!
]
OK now..... go read the 2014 annual report of teachers of Ontario...whose nest egg is just shy of New York city's for teachers, police officers and firefighters combined. By next year Ontario teachers are going to have to decide whether to reduce the cash intake from new young teachers' pay checks... enlarge pay checks for the already retired... or... what.... fund a campaign to hire semi-competent pension managers to replace the criminally incompetent...or completely criminal people handling 160 billion working peoples money like a personal asset. YOU HAVE A PROBLEM... isn't that what they say at interventions?
IF this letter feels like a "shaming" letter.... it isn't ... yet. Fix this crime in which you seem complicit. This is one of the dirtiest, nastiest aspects of the American free market theology.
Teachers, fire fighters, police officers... nurses.. soldiers .. people who maintain a creaky and declining social structure and physical infrastructure are viewed by the nations "truly valued and rewarded heroes" .... hedge fund - (vulture, .oops) venture capitalists...
The teachers of Ontario Canada, like me, are not Marxist revolutionaries. They quite like their middle class bourgeois travels and meals and wines and cottages. They have some respect in their community. They are a treasure to their local communities....
You DO NOT APOLOGIZE OR REGRET that the pension contributions taken from teachers' pay stubs can be invested as wisely as a C+ of B- minus money manager ..one that gives them a decent and comfortable retirement. Unless....UNLESS you see any and every pool of capital in the market as an opportunity to cream off.
As someone with an A++ pension team still working for MY INTEREST (imagine that).. well.. do I really have to say "sucks to be you"...as the kids say?
One thing that scares me the most.... Do you already know all this and have surrendered the will to defend your own interests?
(PS.. Confession... as a young teacher taking his first big step into the wider world... Toronto to NYC on a bus..to catch the low budget Freddy Laker SKYTRAIN to London, I did talk to a nice middle age female teacher. We compared notes. She liked the sound of my benefits..and her annual salary wasn't quite as bad as most Canadian teachers generally assumed of American teachers. I was 26 .. she was 45- 50ish.
I am now 64. We can be fairly certain that the ONLY teacher in NYC or NY state I have ever talked to is not my hidden agenda. That is the full extent of my contact or personal investment here. Good luck UFT... Take the OTTP annual report to your leadership and ask... WHY NOT? )
You deserve it. Your contributions deserve the same treatment mine got.
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