Reader Suggestion: Financial Impact Of Brokerage Woes
What if any effects will all this have on current and retired teachers and administrators? Not a good one, I'm guessing. Though I don't know for sure.
Here's one story to look at: Retirees have a stake in financial firms' plight Cleveland Plain Dealer. Here's another: Teachers group settles AIG suit.
What if anything are those of you in CPS or retired from being told about your pensions and 401ks?
This post was suggested by a reader. Got any suggestions for future posts? Send them to me at district299@gmail.com. I will credit you or not as you would like. Thanks!
CTPF was prudently diversified, so the hit isn't as bad as in many places. But as the tsunamis continue to hit shore, it may get worse. Even CTPF went into some exotic investments during the past five years.
And the first time anyone gets a chance to deal first hand with CTPF comes next month, when two teacher trustees are up for election. Marilyn Stewart is planning on re-slating two of her favorite people
--Maria Rodriguez, who is no longer a "teacher" but will get Marilyn's vote for the "teacher" slot; Rodriguez has been working at the CTU offices as a "teacher on leave" for years now...
--and John O'Brill, who has been in charge of tallying up the vote counts in the House of Delegates the past three or four years); O'Brill has one of those $100,000 a year teaching jobs at the Jail School (52 week school; eight hour day).
In October, Marilyn's minions will be opposed.
Whether the opposition can get together to support only two candidates (only two seats are open) remains to be seen (it's unlikely).
Since the CRPF "teacher rep" elections take place in all schools that have teacher members of the pension (including the charter schools), it will be the first truly citywide election since Mayor Daley began creatiing that private-public section of CPS out there among the charters a few years back.
And the outcome will be important, since the trustees of the fund will have some say over how bad things get in the coming years. Needless to say, the main qualifications of O'Brill and Rodriguez will be that Marilyn Stewart approves of their work.
Do you really think you'd be doing much better if you had the option of Merrill-Lynch or, say, a Bear Sterns hedge fund?
One thing is true: For all of Arne Duncan's talk about "choice", CPS actually prefers dealing with monopolies. Centralized dictatorships tend to function that way. It would probably have been better to figure out how to take your own money and invest it later, after personal due dilligence, but who in the real world has time for that type of work in the "Ownership Society"?
But of course keeping currency in the mattress doesn't help completely if a gallon of milk that cost $1.99 to years ago now costs $2.99 (or more). Despite all that econometric mumbo jumbo (sort of like that psychometric mumbo jumbo on test scores), inflation in the real world of the rest of us is a lot higher than five or six percent -- and everyone who has had to buy milk, break, or gasoline knows that.
This time around, the "best and the brightest" who had infected every major institution have surpassed Enron. Two, three, many Enrons must have been their central committee's slogan on this one. AAARGHHHH...
On Dec. 19, 2007 Standard & Poor's downgraded ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to the junk "CCC" rating from an investment-grade "A" rating. ACA and other bond insurers are being closely monitored for their ability to meet their insurance obligations as credit markets weaken and more defaults occur. ACAH the parent company is trading right now at 25 cents a share.
What this means is that CPS, charter schools, the city are now having much bigger problems floating bonds because the insurance for these bonds are in question. Therefore those buying this debt at greater risk want more interest regardless of the credit rating of the issuer of the debt.
Rod Estvan
Access Living
Thank you Milton Friedman for the insistence on unfettered markets, where the rich become the uberrich and the rest of us slide into poverty. Where golden parachutes are de rigeur and managers who make horrendous decisions are richly rewarded while teachers get bashed for fake test scores.
There was a time where we had choices about our retirement accounts, but CPS insisted the only company that could take care of our 403b's was VALIC. I tried calling my rep for the entire 2006-2007 school year and never got a return call. Last year, they sent me a guy who want me to close down an account I've had for years with another company and roll that over into my Roth IRA - not bad advice, but why did it take so long?????
I'm planning on working until I'm 70 now instead of 60. Hope I can last and that we'll even have a pension since Arne & Rufus complain bitterly about how retired teachers pensions are stopping poor children from getting the resources they need.
I'm still waiting for Arne Duncan to introduce all of us to John Galt. That's the guy who operates "John Galt and Associates" on the 19th Floor of 125 S. Clark St.
If these things weren't so tragic, they would be worth a major laugh in just how sophomoric they are. But the jokes on the rest of us. Arne's been worshipping the John Galt version of reality since he first shaved. That's how you get so many of these goofy "solutions" and that Zombie look when a complex educational question comes up.
Yes.
CPS has been landlord to "John Galt" since Arne took over. Take the elevator up to 19 and ask to meet the gentleman, assuming he's not out to lunch with Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, what's left of Ariel Capital Management, and Arne Duncan.
Are you still (Monday, September 22) still suggesting, RP, that VALIC has a chance of being "spun off" from AIGs addled main body, say, like Lehman unloaded a couple of pieces of itself to Barclays? I didn't know VALIC had a Midtown office building and state-of-the-art computer centers all within a dozen miles of Ground Zero.
After reading the stuff AIG was passing out last week in the schools, it still looks like AIG got the exclusive right to sell tax sheltered annuities in CPS lunchrooms and elsewhere. Are you saying VALICs monopoly was not a monopoly? Who else was allowed to get those annuity dollars extracted from the payroll and moved to them?
To all concerned. Valic is not the only vendor I know because the Hartford is my
Carrier and has been for years. Back in the stone age Valic had a lot of sales people
running around the schools. Some of them were obnoxious so I asked what they
put our money into, this was 1972, she did not know?


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