CalPERS loses $69 billion in biggest market losses since Great Recession

Sacramento Bee ^ | March 22 2020 | BY WES VENTEICHER

[rintintin]

The pot of invested money used to pay for hundreds of thousands of California public employee pensions has shrunk by $69 billion as coronavirus has squeezed global markets.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s fund balance stood about $335 billion Thursday, down from a record high of $404 billion one month ago, according to CalPERS officials.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System likely experienced similar losses, but the system doesn’t publicly report its value as often as CalPERS does. Its value stood about $243 billion at the end of February.

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article241391841.html?#storylink=cpy

[Pearls Before Swine]

Thanks for posting. Misery loves company.

[BipolarBob]

yeah, I lost about that much too. I know their pain.

[LeonardFMason]

Aren’t some Calper’s making 6 figures by gaming the system? TFB. I don’t want a penny in Federal tax dollars used to help.

[angmo]

Government parasites should have gotten the money for their votes up front.

[HighSierra5]

Good. Love seeing these gold brickers suffer. Why should I keep paying taxes for these leeches to live large. I guess there’s always a silver lining to a cloud.

[lurk]

That’s a lot of money that a bunch of career people spent decades investing.

Yes, there’s a lot of corruption and fat and pork, but still this is quite a shot.

Hoping that the market will rebound in the days ahead.

[kingu]

Little correction there.. CalPERS investments has a bad day, all the people of cities/counties/districts that participate in CalPERS lost nearly 70 billion, plus they're on the hook as well for 7%+ interest on that money that vaporized.

Can't wait for a judge to determine that Prop 13 is unconstitutional because it limits the amount of money jurisdictions can seize from the people to pay for government employee benefits.

[blueunicorn6]

They can’t reduce their payout, so what can they do?

Hmmmmmm.....

[Starboard]

Significant pension fund problems on the horizon IMHO.

Lots of payouts still being made during the steep market sell off. Can bailouts be far away?

[SteveH]

i am under the impression that if calpers comes up short then retirement payments come from california’s general fund (state taxes). thus any retirement fund losses are in some sense covered by california taxpayers. in past (obama) years california had been running on empty. with the trump economic recovery and the gas tax, i am not certain where california general fund is right now.

[kingu]

Good. Love seeing these gold brickers suffer. Why should I keep paying taxes for these leeches to live large. I guess there’s always a silver lining to a cloud.

How precious; you imagine that the beneficiaries are somehow losing anything in this. Nope, their benefits remain the same no matter how well or badly CalPERS does. You keep seeing those big school bonds on the ballot? That's to cover up the nearly 50% of all school budgets going to pay for employees who no longer work for the district.

The people are on the hook for the loss (and the interest on the loss of at least 7%.) We're going to see the same thing done yet again that happened during the dot com bust - CalPERS letting cities, counties, districts ONLY pay the interest for a few years until everyone's not watching then get them to issue bonds securing your property as guarantee for the money being repaid.

We suffer.

[rktman]

Should have bought silver/gold................. Just as William DeVane.

[kingu]

Mostly property taxes; only the payments for state employees who are part of CalPERs comes from the general fund makeups. Cities, counties, districts are the largest part of CalPERS. Our houses will be further indebted to pay for this loss.

And this also sets the stage for a judge to rule Prop 13’s limitation on the amount of bond debt (1.5% of the property's value) is unconstitutional since it limits elected government and the ‘will of the voters’ (whom mostly don't own property and thus vote in bonds over and over again thinking it's free money.)

[gloryblaze]

...You keep seeing those big school bonds on the ballot? That's to cover up the nearly 50% of all school budgets going to pay for employees who no longer work for the district....

Yup. They are bad now, and these currently all started before Corona Times. I nearly throw up reading the sappy, glossy mailings encouraging us to "support the children."

[babble-on]

Nice!

[LouAvul]

of invested money

I'm amazed anything was invested. I always assumed it was all a huge Ponzi scheme. I assumed that because of what I knew about kali's politicians.

[montag813]

And reportedly Calpers invests heavily in CHINESE companies

[bboop]

All government employees should get their own 401Ks.

[technically right]

Hmmm. Hadn’t given pensions a whole lot of thought. Was too worried about my own investments. This would be the perfect time for the Congressional Dems to push for public sector pension bailouts. Essentially asking the rest of us to underwrite the poor choices made by liberal states like California, New York, and Illinois. As Rahm famously said, “You never want a good crisis to go to waste”