What do Seattle, RI pension plans have in common?
Seattle, like Rhode Island, sunk a healthy chunk of its pension investment into hedge funds. And here’s hoping the Ocean State’s 14 percent foray into these riskier alternative investments works out better than the 8 percent gamble did for the Emerald City. From Sunday’s Seattle Times: Shorn of its complexity, the story reads like a [...]
Elizabeth Warren: pensions for middle class workers
Are pensions coming back into fashion? Perhaps, said progressive hero Senator Elizabeth Warren who was in Providence last night at a fundraiser at the Convention Center for her Senate Banking Committee colleague Jack Reed. Hailed as one of Wall Street’s worst nightmares and the intellectual godmother of Occupy Wall Street, Warren told me that public [...]
Raimondo pension/hedge fund beat goes on
There’s so many news and blog posts being published about hedging our pension investments in hedge funds and venture capital, I decided to make this Storify to try to keep track of all the different strings to this unfolding financial/political drama that has given credence to our claim that Gina Raimondo is a Wall Street [...]
What Rhode Island should know about hedge funds, part 1
What’s the purpose of investing in a hedge fund? Because “hedge fund manager” is almost synonymous with “fabulously wealthy” in the popular press, lots of people think hedge funds are all about high risk and high returns. Originally, though, hedge funds were thought to provide high returns simply by being consistent, if dull. The idea [...]
Pensions, hedge fund managers, David Boies
As Rhode Island considers whether Gina Raimondo is making a wise gamble with our money by moving more of public sector retirees’ pension account into risky hedge funds, the New York Times Dealbook blog reports that the S&P 500 stock index outperformed the average hedge fund for the fourth year in a row. Swashbuckling bets [...]
Siedle says COLA cuts are paying Wall Street fees
Forbes.com opinion blogger Ted Siedle has posted another piece highly critical of Gina Raimondo’s so-called reforms to the state pension system. This time he suggests that the amount retirees’ cost of living adjustment was slashed might be just enough to afford the new fees being paid to the venture capitalists and hedge fund managers with [...]
For sale from Raimondo: access to public records
It turns out I wasn’t the only one told by Gina Raimondo’s staff lawyer Mark Dingle that public record requests from the general treasurer’s office literally come at a cost. For me, when I asked for records of Raimondo and her staff’s communications with members of Engage RI, the price tag was $435. For AFSCME, [...]
Conventional wisdom shift on Raimondomania
I love that Ted Nesi kicked off his weekend column by invoking the concept of conventional wisdom. It’s a topic that came up often last week about why RI Future does what it does in the manner in which we tend do it. Conventional wisdom, I explained to Ted in an email, is why I [...]
Crucial Questions For Raimondo
There are many important issues that Ted Siedle of Forbes raises about Gina Raimondo and what he calls her pension overhaul – avoiding the loaded term reform so often used by the local media. Here are two that I’ve been asking on this blog for some time now. One is that she is employing a [...]
Gina’s Moral Obligation: Wall Street, Not RI
There is an old saying in politics. “Don’t tell me what your priorities are. Show me your budget, and I will tell you what your priorities are.” Over the course of her first term as General Treasurer, Gina Raimondo, when pressed to make a choice stand with workers or with Wall Street she will choose [...]
Forbes Trashes Raimondo
Don’t file this one under Raimondomia as Forbes offers a very harsh criticism of General Treasurer/gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo. Ted Siedle writes that Rhode Island’s pension reform, which has attracted many accolades, “will inevitably dramatically increase both risk and fees paid to alternative investment managers, such as hedge funds and private equity firms.” And those [...]
Who Matters: Bond Traders Or Rhode Islanders?
Local labor unions are protesting all of Gina Raimondo’s public appearances to call attention to their cuts to their retirement security she shepherded through in 2011. But their appearance in front of the Bond Buyers conference this morning was especially poignant because many think Raimondo represents Wall Street first and foremost, and Rhode Island is [...]
Was Labor ‘At The Table’ For Pension Legislation?
Probably a big point of contention as Rhode Island and its public sector retirees try to mediate a compromise on pension reform will be whether or not organized labor was considered when drafting the legislation. As few hundred Providence fire fighters, police officers and other public sector union members protested outside a conference for Bond [...]
Can RI Take Tips from Illinois Pension Reform Bill
As mediation starts this week, someone might want take a closer look at Illinois proposed pension reform legislation. The bill might not pass there, but it might be worth using as a model in mediation here because it corrects a similar-sized unfunded liability in a way that seems less onerous on retirees without raising taxes [...]
Some Year-End Reading for Progressive Policy Geeks
This time of year folks compile their year-end reading lists; so as we head into the holiday week, with pension debates and fiscal cliffs waiting for us on the other side of the calendar, I wanted to offer some suggestions: The first is a just released paper from Steven M. Teles, Associate Professor of Political [...]
Judge to Gina: Negotiate Pension Reform Law
Gina Raimondo didn’t want to come to the negotiating table voluntarily, but now thanks to a court order she will have to sit down with organized labor and Gov. Linc Chafee to try to hammer out a compromise on Rhode Island’s landmark pension reform law, according to a story first reported by WPRI. Chafee has [...]
Blame Gina Raimondo? Not So Fast, Progressives
Regular readers of the blog know that Treasurer Raimondo has become a lightening-rod for criticism of the state’s recent changes to the public employee pension system. As a tactic, I’ll admit it’s a good one, simultaneously riling up the base and drawing media attention to the union and retiree’s position. It’s also the first salvo [...]
ProJo Stories Show Where Gina Values Transparency
There was an interesting juxtaposition of articles relating to pension politics and Raimondomania stripped across the top of A1 of the Providence Journal this morning; one was about the outside money coming into the Ocean State, and the other was about local money leaving. In the first article, about pension reform politics being funded in [...]
The EngageRI, Pension Reform, Enron Connection
Rhode Island has long worried that its oft-lauded efforts to reduce public sector pensions was being secretly funded by Wall Street fat cats. Well, it turns out that one of the biggest financial supporters of pension reform is a former Enron energy trader who went on to make billions as a hedge fund manager. John [...]
Firefighters Plan to Protest All Raimondo Fundraisers
Paul Valletta, the head of the Cranston fire fighters’ union who is organizing a picket line in front of a Gina Raimondo fundraiser tonight says his members plan to protest every fundraiser Raimondo has until the governor’s race is decided in 2014, he said today. “When you do something like this to working class people,” [...]
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