Whoah! This will never make it big on MainStreamMedia:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. will pay $299 million to California's public employee and teacher pension funds as part of a settlement related to mortgage-related investments, state Attorney General Kamala Harris announced Tuesday.
The money will settle claims that the company misrepresented the value of residential mortgage-backed securities sold to the California Public Employees Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System between 2004 and 2008.
"JP Morgan Chase profited by giving California's pension funds incomplete information about mortgage investments," Harris said in a statement. "This settlement returns the money to California's pension funds that JP Morgan wrongfully took from them."
Three cheers for California Attorney General Kamala Harris!
This settlement is part of the disbursement of the widely ballyhooed $13 billion levied against JP Morgan for, among a number of other things, fraudulent "mortgage-backed securities sold to the California Public Employees Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System between 2004 and 2008..."
California was particularly hard hit by the mortgage frauds of the Bush years:
California has had nearly 1 million foreclosed homes — more than any other state — since the housing meltdown began in early 2007, according to DataQuick, a San Diego-based research firm.
California also leads the nation in the number of short sales, during which a home is sold for less than what was owed on the mortgage. DataQuick estimates there were 460,000 short sales between 2007 and September of this year, out of 706,000 nationally in the regions it tracks.
U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in Sacramento said the activity described in Tuesday's settlement with JPMorgan was "symptomatic of the recklessness on Wall Street." His region includes the Central Valley, which he describes as being "ravaged" by the mortgage crisis.
This is really good news in an era of constant, unflagging attacks on public employees and their retirement funds in virtually every state -- except perhaps California.
Yet another well-planned, well-funded, coordinated attack on public pension plans has surfaced. It includes new academic studies, a new website, a new Congressional report, and supporting media coverage. This time the focus is on the red herring of a Federal bailout of state and local pension plans. But maybe there is a silver lining? In any case, it suggests that a new effort to impose Federal regulation or mandates on States and their pension plans may be underway.
The latest assault on public pension plans began on September 20, 2012, with the release of a new study by the Illinois Policy Institute entitled “A Federal Bailout of State Pensions Systems Will Reward Failure.” This study claims that “If states do not make fundamental reforms to their pension plans, they would need to increase their contributions to the pension funds by 75 percent in order to remain solvent.”
Therefore, the study assumes that a Federal bailout of state pensions is coming – funded either by raising Federal taxes, offering Federal debt guarantees, selling State pension debt to the Federal Reserve, which would in turn print new money to buy the debt (which they refer to as “monetization”), or providing Federal benefit guarantees. “In the end, any federal bailout would reward the most profligate states at the expense of more responsible states,” the Illinois study argues.
The Illinois Policy Institute, eh? Read that as just another arm of the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC.
Washington Policy Institute? Ditto! Alabama Policy Institute? Ditto!
The Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) is a conservative think tank with offices in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, and member of the State Policy Network. The IPI describes itself as a "leading independent research and education organization." They claim that "the ultimate sign of success is when free market ideas are turned into law and change lives for the better."
Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
IPI is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as of 2011. Brian Costin, IPI Director of Outreach, and Ted Dabrowski, Vice President of Policy, represent IPI on ALEC's Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force. At the 2011 Annual Meeting, Costin introduced the "Local Government Transparency Act" model legislation, and Dabrowski introduced the "Pension Funding and Fairness Act" model legislation for adoption by the task force. The latter was adopted and proceeded to the ALEC Board of Directors for approval. Executive Vice President Kristina Rasmussen represented IPI on the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force as of April 2010, when she penned an article entitled "Pension Funding Reform: A Solution for Budget Deficits" for ALEC's newsletter, Inside ALEC.