That doesn’t make sense. The average employee contributing a portion of their paycheck to pension for 25 years had very little to do with the investing decisions between CitiBank and the State and County Employees of Wherever.
Investment bankers, investment officers on the pension side, rating agencies and the Fed, corrupt politicians bought by deregulating lobbies, the originators of fraudulent crap undocumented loans like Countrywide, the appraisers of crap loans — and don’t forget all the douchebag get-rich-quick in real estate millionaires from the past 15 years…
These parties are primarily responsible for the worst financial crash in our lifetime. The parties on Wall Street made the majority of the profits off what they knew to be a swindle. That is why my ire is directed at ‘Wall Street’. Because the sophisticated parties in this arrangement knew the system was ultimately a leveraged fraud. They should go to jail.
Hardly any of people whining about Joe Carpenter’s pension benefits are outraged about the primary cause of this debacle — Wall Street investment bankers, bank lobbies and GOP deregulation, fraudulent originator banks, rating agencies riddled with conflicts of interest, irresponsible federal reserve policies. These people were sophisticated parties and 99% of them knew it was a bubble and knew it going to crash at some point.
That’s why I think most of the outrage over penion benefits is just more GOP-sponsored outrage-of-the-week talking point crap.
Do I think public employee compensation needs reform? Yes.
AFTER financial industry executives go to jail for running a fraud scheme, gambling away money that wasn’t theirs and tanking the U.S. economy. Were it not for the Wall Street, there would be no pension insolvency. ‘Financial engineering’ (what the fuck is that?!) ENABLED pensions to underfund in the first place.
