Ed Notes Extended

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Wall Street Fees Wipe Out $2.5 Billion in New York City Pension Gains - NY Times

The Lenape tribe got a better deal on the sale of Manhattan island than New York City’s pension funds have been getting from Wall Street, according to a new analysis by the city comptroller’s office....  http://nyti.ms/1anMi33
Apparently, most of the interest gain on our pension money is going straight to Wall Street.  Disgusting - and frankly, I don't think Mulgrew's comments below communicate the appropriate level of outrage. If I was charged $250 in fees on a $16,000 I had in a bank account, I would be calling up the FDIC and saying that I had been scammed.  If we get charge $2.5B on $160B in our life savings, then we should be demonstrating in the streets.... 
.... comment on MORE Listserve
I should apply for the job of pension fund manager. Frankly, I've done much better than they did over the past 25 years. Or maybe I should run for the UFT pension rep position.
The analysis concluded that, over the past 10 years, the five pension funds have paid more than $2 billion in fees to money managers and have received virtually nothing in return, Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said in an interview on Wednesday.
“When you do the math on what we pay Wall Street to actively manage our funds, it’s shocking to realize that fees have not only wiped out any benefit to the funds, but have in fact cost taxpayers billions of dollars in lost returns,” Mr. Stringer said.
Why the trustees of the funds — Mr. Stringer included — would not have performed those calculations in the past is not clear.
Mulgrew's la-di-da comments are priceless:
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.
“Education’s always being put under reform; maybe some of these financial practices should be put under reform as well,” Mr. Mulgrew said. He praised Mr. Stringer for taking aim at a line of business that has been very lucrative for Wall Street.
Where are our elected pension reps?

2 comments:

  1. No big deal, 2.5 billion to Wall Street and teachers have to buy their own school supplies, school buildings are falling apart and the teachers in my school carry their own toilet paper in their briefcases (because the stalls never have any). Mulgrew should start visiting every school in every borough to get a realistic view of the conditions of all his members: new teachers, tenured teachers and those (according to him on NPR)"unwanted" professional, seasoned ATRs.

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  2. Perhaps we need an investigative wing of MORE, ICE, whoever, that can look into the TRS, where our COPE money actually goes, what actually goes on with the IPDVS(Internet Protocol Digital Video Surveillance) Cameras. If we can expose the ineptitude maybe we can force some action.

    What is it they say about sunshine....

    Sadly 80% of us still won't care enough to vote

    ReplyDelete

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