Tag Archive for: Wall Street and public sector pension funds

Pensions: Giant 401K Plans

One of the biggest apparent misconceptions on the part of those who believe public sector pension benefits can remain unchanged is that somehow there is a difference between 401K plans and public sector pension funds. The only difference is one of scale. Individual citizens save money and invest the money in a 410K plan or other individual retirement account. Public sector pension funds take vast sums of money and invest it in the very same places – primarily Wall Street equities.

While it is true that an institutionally managed, massive and diversified pension fund may be less volatile than an individually managed retirement account, it is also true that massive pension funds are far less likely to enjoy returns that beat the market. They’re too big. So when the market value of stocks and other assets fall, it is impossible for large pension funds to not also see their values also fall.

If you recognize this – the fact that public sector pension funds are just as subject to economic ups and downs as individual 401K funds, and that they are invested in exactly the same things – then comments by defenders of keeping the public pension benefit system unchanged become inexplicable.

President Obama, in a speech last month where he lambasted the nonexistent Republican plan to privatize social security, said “I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street.” But public sector employee pension funds are themselves gamblers on Wall Street.

SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina, in a Sept. 3rd commentary on the Huffington Post entitled “Wall Street is to Blame for Pension Shortfalls,” claims “For generations, Americans have counted on three sources of retirement income: social security, employment pensions, and personal savings. Wall Street is bent on undermining all three by pushing risky social security privatization schemes…” and further states, “Their goal is to strip away guaranteed pensions and force more workers into 401k-style plans that put all the risk onto workers while putting more money into the bankers’ own pockets.” But Wall Street returns are the only way pension funds can project solvency. Wall Street has already robbed the private sector taxpayer, and now those same taxpayers will have to also cover the losses of the pension funds, who gambled taxpayer’s money on Wall Street?

The President of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, Paul Weber, in an editorial published last month entitled “Public employee pension ‘reforms’ recipe for disaster” wrote “the 401K approach to retirement savings is, and will continue to be, an absolute disaster for this country.” In the same editorial, he goes on to say “while public pension plans have also taken severe hits, they have a long-term investment outlook, and their obligations aren’t due in full in the next five, 10 or even 20 years.” But all this means is that pensions are gigantic 401K plans, administered by professionals, managed over decades, but still reliant on Wall Street to survive.

What Obama, Medina, Weber and others don’t seem to fully recognize is that (a) massive public employee pension funds are themselves gambling with Wall Street just as much as any 401K plan participant, (b) the Wall Street crash was the result of a debt bubble that was built with the avid collusion of Wall Street, the government, and feckless consumers, and (c) long-term return on investment projections for large pension funds based on a 40 year expansion of unsustainable credit are too high for the era we now live in, where collateral continues to shrink and credit lines collapse apace.

Here are some additional thoughts:

(1) Social Security serves 80% of the retired population with benefits that on average are one-fourth what public sector pensioners receive, because they pay out 1/3rd vs. 2/3rd of recent salary, and because they begin payments 10 years later than public pensions.

(2) The absolute dollars necessary to pay Social Security to 80% of our retired population are therefore approximately the same amount as the absolute dollars necessary to pay public sector pensions to 20% of our retired population. The same size liability for one-fourth as many people!

(3) While in the past public sector employees made less than their counterparts in the private sector, in exchange for better benefits, that hasn’t been the case for over ten years. The average private sector worker in California earns less than $60,000 in total compensation (including all benefits). The average public sector worker in California earns about $100K in total compensation – nearly twice as much.

(4) Social Security is not in danger of going insolvent – it can be fixed with incremental changes; a higher ceiling on withholding, a higher percentage withholding, an older retirement age, and slightly lower benefits. Social Security is an appropriate taxpayer funded system of retirement security. In conjunction with personal savings, eliminating debt, and no new taxes, Social Security enables retired workers to live with dignity.

(5) Public sector pensions rely on the whims of Wall Street just as much as 401K plans. To demonize Wall Street at the same time as resisting calls to reduce public sector pension benefits is grotesquely hypocritical. Public sector pension funds are in bed with Wall Street, transferring over $250 billion dollars of taxpayer’s money through Wall Street brokers every year.

(6) If the inflation-adjusted projected rate of return for public sector pension funds were lowered from 4.75% to 2.375%, the contribution rates into these funds would rise from between 20-35% of salary (non-safety vs. safety) to between 40-70% of salary. This is not possible. This is why pension fund managers are making increasingly risky investments on Wall Street instead of admitting they will not be able to sustain 4.75% rates of return any longer.

(7) The solution to public sector pension plan insolvency – and they are all insolvent once you admit 4.75% returns will no longer accrue to trillion dollar funds in a debt-saturated, stagnant economy – is to move to a pay-as-you-go system, just like Social Security. Current tax receipts should be used to pay current retired workers.

Defenders of the status quo seem to embrace the seductive notion that Wall Street will solve all of our retirement security problems for public sector workers at the same time as they indulge the urge to demonize Wall Street for the failures of 401K plans. This contradiction escapes them, as they expect private sector taxpayers cover not only the downside of their individual retirement savings losses, but also whatever losses may accrue to the public employee’s pension funds.