-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
"A dozen years ago, five financially strapped city of Chicago pension funds invested $68 million in a shaky real estate deal put together by a former boss of President Barack Obama and a nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley.... Not only did the pension funds not make a profit, records show they will end up losing a combined $54.2 million for the retirement plans."
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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You’d think the firemen, policemen, teachers and city/state workers would demand 401k style retirement plans. Not one of them would invest in something as stupid as what these “professionals” did. Do these workers not care what these idiots are doing with their retirement money? The workers are paying their union to advocate for them; where is the union? Doesn’t the union care to do it’s job? Is the union in on the scam? Maybe the workers don’t care because they think the taxpayers will guarantee them an extravagant rate of return no matter how incompetently their funds are managed
Wow clearly a HUGE WIN/WIN for Vanecko and Davis. Gee, what could go wrong with “buy and develop properties in struggling Chicago areas” ? And the prospectus even described that the investment could lose ALL its money. Oh well, $50M is chump change in the totals for the plans.
I wonder what Davis paid Obama to do right out of law school……probably got trained in how to game the systems he’d be in.