This screw-the-worker saga is rich. Rich with irony, ire, and incomplete coverage.
So take a few minutes and get up to speed. If your BP can handle it, that is ... if not, I suggest this other diversion.
$1 Trillion Federal Budget Bill Threatens Pensions, Has "No Opportunity for Public Input," Says Rep. Louis Slaughter
by Rebecca S. Myles, latinpost.com -- Dec 11, 2014
[...]
Tucked into the spending bill is an amendment that overturns 40 years of federal law that could affect millions of middle-class people working in trucking, construction and supermarkets. The measure affects multiemployer pensions that have become badly underfunded, and some could run out of money within a few years.
Multiemployer pension funds were created where a group of businesses in the same industry join unions to provide pension coverage for employees. The plans cover 10 million U.S. workers, according to The Washington Post.
Many of the multiemployer pension funds were targeted by institutional investors by financial companies and banks in the pre-crash years, and they bought mortgage-backed securities, which subsequently imploded. They pension funds were sold a fraudulent product, which ended up depleting the [pension] fund.
[...]
What's in the Spending Bill --
We skim it so you don’t have to
by Ed O'Keefe, washingtonpost.com -- December 10, 2014
[...]
PENSIONS:
For the first time, the benefits of current retirees could be severely cut, part of an effort to save some of the nation’s most distressed pension plans. The change would alter 40 years of federal law and could affect millions of workers, many of them part of a shrinking corps of middle-income employees in businesses such as trucking, construction and supermarkets.
Congress eyes move to cut pension benefits
by John W. Schoen, cnbc.com -- Dec 10, 2014
[...]
But the changed proposed Tuesday has drawn fire from unions and other retirement advocates.
"The problem is much more serious than skimming retirement benefits to keep the PBGC [Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation] on life support," said Richard Greer, a spokesman for the Laborers' International Union of North America. This proposal "would siphon off tens of millions of dollars in hard earned retirement benefits to try and rescue the PBGC."
About a quarter of the roughly 40 million workers who participate in a traditional "defined benefit" plan -- those that pay retirees a guaranteed check every month -- are covered by these multiemployer plans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Both public and private pension funds were hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis, which wiped out trillions of investments used to pay retiree benefits. [...]
[...]
Congressional leaders hammer out deal to allow pension plans to cut retiree benefits
by Michael A. Fletcher, washingtonpost.com -- December 9, 2014
[...]
But it also has stirred strong opposition from retirees who could face deep pension cuts and from advocates eager to keep retiree pensions sacrosanct, even in cases when funds are in a deep financial hole.
“We thought our pension was secure,” said Whitlow Wyatt, a retired trucker who lives in Washington Court House, a small city in central Ohio. “That was always the word. Now they are changing that.”
Wyatt, 70, retired with a $3,300-a-month pension in 2000 after working more than 33 years as a long-haul driver. He could face pension reductions of 30 percent or more if Congress permits trustees of the hard-pressed pension fund to slash benefits.
[...]
Nice ...
not.
Their word, is no longer as 'good as their bond'. When they (in the 1%) promise you anything -- don't believe it.
Because, Congress can revoke "40 years of Federal Labor law" -- just like that! Simply by writing the rollback fine-print, as a rider at the end of a "must pass" bill. That is on an "unmovable" deadline ...
No worries though, talking heads much smarter than us dumb workers, are "endorsing" the Pension rider ... It's "good medicine" for us, they say.
REPRESENTATIVE PHIL ROE (R-TN)
House Education & Workforce Committee -- solutionsnotbailouts.com
"Pension plans that include hundreds of thousands of workers will become insolvent unless they receive the tools necessary to change course. If they don't, it is impossible to predict with any certainty how far the consequences will spread."
Nice ... not.
Consequences of what, exactly? Funny how so few "journalists" ever bother to ask our rollback Congress-bots that simple question ...
Who is responsible for ill-prepared state of your average pension fund, especially the smaller ones, once dependent on union participation?
Well guess what? What those cash-strapped Pension funds were coached to invest in -- back in the Hey-days of the early 2000's ...
S&P Loses Bid to End California’s Mortgage Ratings Suit
by Karen Gullo, bloomberg.com -- Nov 15, 2013
[...]
Standard & Poor’s lost a second bid to dismiss a lawsuit by California’s attorney general seeking to hold the company responsible for $1 billion in losses by state pension funds that bought mortgage-backed securities awarded the company’s highest ratings.
[...]
The California lawsuit is one of more than a dozen filed in February against S&P by the U.S. and a group of states over ratings on mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom.
[...]
Guess who "targeted" those pension funds (holding our money), with their
"can't lose" mortgage-backed investment securities?
Pension funds can sue credit-rating agencies
by Bob Egelko, sfgate.com -- September 13, 2014
The state Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed California's public employee pension system to sue credit-rating giants Moody's and Standard & Poor's for hundreds of millions of dollars over the high ratings they gave to investments that collapsed in 2007-08.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System, which has more than 1.6 million state and local government employees and retirees as members, suffered a reported $10 billion in investment losses when the real estate market plummeted in the late 2000s.
The lawsuit involves its $1.3 billion investment in 2006 in three financial products -- Cheyne Finance, Stanfield Victoria Funding and Sigma Finance -- that had received the highest ratings from Moody's and Standard & Poor's. They were securities issued by banks and management companies and available only in private offerings to a limited number of institutional investors, including the pension system.
[...]
Well we all know now, how well those 'shallow promises' turned out.
Apparently you can Lose, when Wall Street's involved in the math -- that effects
your money.
Pension Funds, Dancing a Two-Step With Ratings Firms
by Gretchen Morgenson, nytimes.com -- June 14, 2014
[...]
Consider the $300 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers. Its 2009 lawsuit against Moody’s and S.&P. contends that the system lost $800 million on mortgage securities it bought based on those agencies’ positive ratings. The ratings, Calpers said in its lawsuit, were negligent misrepresentations.
[...]
Calpers is not alone in taking this oddly contradictory stance. Seventeen states have sued S.&P., contending that they were misled on ratings. But many of these states have similar policies requiring that their investment professionals -- such as treasurers and pension overseers -- rely on S.&P. ratings.
[...]
“Given the damage that baseless and inflated ratings did to investors, it is a mystery why they are not in the forefront demanding that the S.E.C. use all its authority to ensure that credit ratings agencies are conflict-free and merit the reliance they court and induce,” he said in an interview [Dennis M. Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in financial reform].
So who's at fault for the current version of the Pension Fund 'deferred-salary' Recalls?
Why only the usual Wall Street Mortgage-Backed suspects.
So, why is it always the hard-working citizens of America, who are the ones expected to pay for their deceptions, "negligent misrepresentations," and down-right fraud?
The hard-working citizens of America, should really want to know ...