Tag "CalSTRS"

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Why is CalSTRS’ version of corporate skulduggery tolerated?

Beginning in the late 1990s and for about a decade afterward, corporate accounting scandals unfolded one after the other. Bipartisan outrage over CEOs and CFOs cooking the books gave way to mostly Democratic initiatives to impose much more sweeping rules

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CalSTRS hearing underscores Mac Taylor’s destructive happy talk

An Assembly committee hearing Wednesday on the immense underfunding problems facing the California State Teachers’ Retirement System also illuminated another strange problem in Sacramento: the emergence of Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor as a civic arsonist. As John Myers reported, one

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Brown: No teachers' pension fix until after November election

Gov. Jerry Brown has a basic problem when it comes to the California State Teachers' Retirement System: the most powerful forces in state politics oppose the standard fix for an underfunded pension system, even if it is now enshrined in

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State finances: LAO’s own report on CalSTRS demolishes LAO’s happy talk

I’m still struggling to make sense of Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor’s bizarrely upbeat report last month on state finances that predicted budget surpluses for years to come — but barely mentioned the state’s huge unfunded liabilities for retiree pensions and

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LAO’s cheerfully nutty budget report: Pension crisis? What pension crisis?

The Legislative Analyst’s Office has among the best reputations of any state agency. But after the release of Wednesday’s bizarre LAO budget analysis and accompanying press conference by Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, I don’t know why. I groused about it

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CA auditor demolishes Jerry-Brown-saved-state narrative

The eagnerness of national media to lionize Gov. Jerry Brown as the guy who saved California amounts to an extreme form of cherry-picking. In some ways, Brown has done a better job than his two immediate predecessors in forcing some

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Gov. Brown’s May budget revision still kicks the can

May 14, 2013 By John Seiler Gov. Jerry Brown’s May Revision to his January budget certainly was a happier occasion than for any budget in a decade. Thanks to money pouring in from the tax increases, especially $7 billion from

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CalSTRS ‘baby’ owes $29,632 already

May 8, 2013 By John Seiler As Ed Ring notes today, the state of California has run up a “Wall of Debt” of $1.126 trillion. That’s $1,126,000,000,000,000.00. There are 38 million Californians. So it comes to $29,632 per person, including

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Crazifornia: CalPERS Death Star looming nearer still

May 3, 2013 By Laer Pearce I have a financial planner friend who often includes tax-free municipal bonds in his customers’ portfolios and therefore closely tracks matters like the Stockton bankruptcy’s potential impact on municipal bond rates. He definitely did

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LAO: CalSTRS massively underfunded

March 26, 2013 By Katy Grimes SACRAMENTO — The state’s Legislative Analyst released another stinging report last week showing the California State Teachers’ Retirement System suffers $73 billion of unfunded pension debt. But CalSTRS is using doubtful figures to minimize the

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