OT- CONTEST!!! Guess public sector household earnings

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Everyone in charge of originating, bundling, rating, and selling the “toxic” mortgages and related derivatives, etc. should take the first hit. Either they were grossly incompetent and totally undeserving of any profits they made (least likely), or they are criminals (most likely). I’d put Alan Greenspan at the very top of the list. After that, would come every single person who got in the way of investigators/auditors/whistle-blowers who were trying to do their jobs.

You don’t actually think it was all one big “accidental” mistake, do you?[/quote]
Would you also add in those who made money from RE by selling at the peak? How about those who expected the down turn and short the market when it start to crash?[/quote]

Sure, but we’ll have to subtract the cost of their rent while they bubble-sat. 🙂

[an]

[quote=CA renter]Sure, but we’ll have to subtract the cost of their rent while they bubble-sat. :)[/quote]
Sweet, so if I bubble-sit for the rest of my life, I can get my money back?

[temeculaguy]

[quote=AN]TG, what you’re saying then is, the public employee pension system is not unsustainable, and we’re blow it out of proportion due to this down turn? I’d love to see an apple to apple comparison between a public vs a private employee, to see which much “underpaid” public employees really area. Too bad I don’t have that data.[/quote]

I am kinda/sorta saying that. Some other posters talked about scape goats, just don’t get distracted by shiny objects when in fact it doesn’t add up to what it is being portrayed as. When you get riled up, ask yourself “who benefits from my being riled up?” Sure, there are some examples to get riled up about and those things are being changed as we type. someone wants you to get riled up, maybe so you will ignore something else. Maybe it’s about some stupid election, who knows, who cares.

I gave up being riled up for lent and I’m not catholic, life is easier now, try it. I worry about sports, breasts, cars, you know, the important things.

See, feel better, SDSU will be playing UNM at the pit on wednesday, that is a whole lot more important than the life expectancey of government employees now isnt it.

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Sure, but we’ll have to subtract the cost of their rent while they bubble-sat. :)[/quote]
Sweet, so if I bubble-sit for the rest of my life, I can get my money back?[/quote]

Sure, you should be able to deduct this expense from the profits made from short-selling your house.

[Coronita]

[quote=CA renter][quote=flu]

Who/what part of “wall street” caused this problem?

Wall street bankers that did M&A or
Wall street bankers that were underwriters for IPO’s or
Wall street bankers that were involved in CDO’s
or who?

Or all of them? You don’t know, because well, sorry, most folks on Main Street don’t understand, so it’s kinda hard to assess blame. But there’s a lot of anger and frustration, so it ends up being a witch hunt.

Ok, and here’s the rub. If you don’t like Wall Street, don’t use one of their products. Don’t have an IRA/401k/etc, because those are the very instruments created by “Wall Street”[/quote]

Everyone in charge of originating, bundling, rating, and selling the “toxic” mortgages and related derivatives, etc. should take the first hit. Either they were grossly incompetent and totally undeserving of any profits they made (least likely), or they are criminals (most likely). I’d put Alan Greenspan at the very top of the list. After that, would come every single person who got in the way of investigators/auditors/whistle-blowers who were trying to do their jobs.

You don’t actually think it was all one big “accidental” mistake, do you?[/quote]

No, I don’t, but let me again ask. Who(m) on specifically on wall street should take the blame? Because Big Government sure wasn’t able to crack down on imposing Wall Street bonuses when XYZ works in the M&A department at Goldman or Morgan Stanley, and clearly had nothing to do with those toxic mortgages.

It’s getting kinda old that we keep blaming “Wall Street” for all the ills..

[Anonymous]

TG,

Here’s a link that urbanrealtor posted in the other thread. It’s the best data I’ve seen that describes the situation.

http://www.governing.com/columns/public-money/col-Pension-Puffery.html

And it’s not about “what others get.” I’ve known plenty of ridiculously overpaid people in my life and I’ve learned not to let it bother me.

What it is about is how we commit our resources as a society.

My particular concern is the downward spiral of education in California, both at the secondary and university level.

It may sound melodramatic, but I believe that if we allow one generation to rob the next, we have failed as a society.

Read some of the numbers in the link I posted above, then take a look at the dire situation in our schools. We’ve got our priorities fvked up in a big way, and we need to get back on course.

[Anonymous]

[quote=CA renter]I’d put Alan Greenspan at the very top of the list. [/quote]

You do know that Alan Greenspan was a public employee?

He almost certainly is drawing a pension.

And what is the Federal Reserve anyway? It’s primary function is to determine interest rates – the price of money.

A group of knowledgeable people deciding what things are worth to society. Where have we heard that idea before?

Lets take a look up-thread:

[quote=CA renter]I am not at all an adherent of the “Efficient Market Hypothesis” […]

Sometimes, we need rational people to monitor and regulate markets — people with the requisite knowledge and understanding of how things work and who fully understand what the consequences of certain actions will be. Call it what you will… [/quote]

So we should have “rational people monitoring and regulating markets,” but if anything goes wrong, we hold them accountable and make them personally compensate for the market losses?

Are you actually suggesting that we hold public employees accountable, and have them bear the cost of financial downturns, just like everyone else?

I think we may be starting to agree after all…

[an]

[quote=temeculaguy]I am kinda/sorta saying that. Some other posters talked about scape goats, just don’t get distracted by shiny objects when in fact it doesn’t add up to what it is being portrayed as. When you get riled up, ask yourself “who benefits from my being riled up?” Sure, there are some examples to get riled up about and those things are being changed as we type. someone wants you to get riled up, maybe so you will ignore something else. Maybe it’s about some stupid election, who knows, who cares.

I gave up being riled up for lent and I’m not catholic, life is easier now, try it. I worry about sports, breasts, cars, you know, the important things.

See, feel better, SDSU will be playing UNM at the pit on wednesday, that is a whole lot more important than the life expectancey of government employees now isnt it.[/quote]
Don’t worry TG, I’m not riled up. I enjoy talking about it. I know I can’t really do anything about it personally, so I don’t take this too personal, other than taking it as an opportunity to learn more information. Now, coming back to the statement about it not adding up, what do you have to say about this statement from pri_dk’s link:
[quote=linky]Half-truth #2: “There is no crisis. Once the stock market recovers, there is no problem.”
Some of today’s pension Pollyannas claim that when stock-market trends return to their historical averages, everything works out. That is simply ignorance and puffery from people who don’t even bother to understand pension math. The actuarial projections used by most public pension plans are already assuming that 85-year historical returns will continue indefinitely, even though many of the major investment consultants have already dialed down their projections for the next decade. Perpetual stock-market increases of 10 percent annually are already baked into the funding ratios that now hover just above 70 percent on average nationwide. Even if stocks return next year to their previous peak levels (DJIA 14,100), that wouldn’t restore pre-recession funding ratios. That’s because there have been no capital gains from equities for the five intervening years while the underlying liabilities have grown about 50 percent. Stocks may have good and bad growing seasons, but there is never a crop failure on the liabilities farm. As I explained last year, stock indexes would have to double in the next two years to restore most pension funds to their 2007 funding ratios. To return the average pension fund to full funding, stock markets would have to produce 14 percent compounded returns the rest of this decade, with no intervening recession. That would put the Dow Industrials at 30,000 in January 2020. I’ll gladly give even odds against that scenario to anyone who wants to buy into that long-shot.[/quote]

[sdrealtor]

Sorry was away for the weekend up the coast. The numbers were $111 and $143 for a total of $254k. To me that is a lot of money for a household to make. These are not people living in a high end NCC community but rather a very modest working class one. Maybe I’m outta touch but a household with two “line workers” making that much seems like a lot. Frankly a lot of the guesses close to and above 300k shocked me.

I also think looking at current pension numbers is a fallacy. It’s not what they are collecting now but what we are committed to and have guaranteed in the future. If I’m selling a luxury retirement lifestyle I’d target public sector workers as there is going to be a lot of them in another 20 to 30 years. I always heard the arguments around here that real estate was getting so expensive our children wouldn’t be able to afford that. I never bought into that because I knew the market would eventually correct itself. This public sector compensation, benefit and pension mess truly worries me because there is no way for the market it to correct itself. We have committed to something I don’t know how we will ever pay for and there is no way around it.

[sdrealtor]

Dupe

[NotCranky]

253,597.14

[bearishgurl]

Looks like Rus won!

[NotCranky]

[quote=bearishgurl]Looks like Rus won![/quote]
ROTFLMAO!

[NotCranky]

Ignore This!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=sdrealtor]Sorry was away for the weekend up the coast. The numbers were $111 and $143 for a total of $254k. To me that is a lot of money for a household to make.[/quote]

Bear in mind that if your short-sale-exploring public-worker couple is working OT to earn this much, their pension will be based upon their base pay only.

If they are grossly underwater, I wouldn’t want to be them. Obviously, the public safety worker cannot tarnish his/her reputation with bad credit (if his/her employer has reserved the right of post-employment BR checks under the FCRA). Especially by “strategically defaulting.”

NOT a good idea!!

These worker bees are “stuck” and will have to ride it out in their “modest, working class” home (or put it into rental svc), IMO.

[Author]

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