All posts tagged calpers cafr

Public Pensions: Welfare For The Middle Class


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I often hear complaints from the well-to-do about how their hard-earned taxpayer money is drained from their paychecks so as to pay for the welfare system of government. Ironically, many of these middle and upper middle-class people are on a public pension system of some sort as government workers, from military to police and firefighters, judges to teachers, and mayors to laborers.

This irony stems from the fact that these public pensioners never comprehend that their pensions are in fact set up in the same way as the Federal welfare system. So let’s compare these two investment schemes…

1) Welfare is paid for by Federal and State taxes collected from all taxpayers and placed into an investment fund.

1) Public pensions are partially or wholly paid for by all taxpayers of the State, local, and Federal governments as “matching funds” and placed into an investment fund. Government employers are taxpayer funded, thus “matching funds” is taxpayer money.

2) The people (taxpayers) have no equity in the employer (taxpayer) contributions (taxation) to the Welfare system. That tax money is property in the trust of government.

2) The people (taxpayers) have no equity in the employer (taxpayer) contributions (taxation) to the Public pension system. That tax money is property in the trust of government.

3) Welfare pays benefits to people who qualify for it under certain criteria.

3) Pensions pay benefits to people who qualify for it under certain criteria.

4) Welfare is a trust run by government.

4) Pension funds are a trust run by government.

5) The taxpayers who never claim welfare benefits never get a return on their investment.

5) Taxpayers cannot claim pension benefits and therefore can never get a return on their investment.

6) Taxpayers are funding the benefits paid to welfare recipients with no benefit to themselves.

6) Taxpayers are funding the benefits paid to public pensioners with no benefit to themselves.

7) Welfare benefit recipients contribute their own tax money into the welfare system.

7) Pension benefit recipients contribute their own tax money into the pension system.

8) People who use welfare system benefits are knowingly mooching from the public tax-base.

8) People who use the pension system are either knowingly or unknowingly mooching from the public tax-base.

9) Welfare is an insurance pension investment fund that pays benefits for a certain amount of time for “un-employment”.

9) Pensions are insurance pension investment funds that pay benefits for a certain amount of time for “post-employment”.

10) The welfare system can be shut down and liquidated at any time by its owner, which is government, and pay no future benefits.

10) The pension system can be shut down and liquidated at any time by its owner, which is government, and pay no future benefits.

11) Benefits paid in both systems are a way to collect revenue as “contributions” for government that no longer belongs to the people, which is taken from the entire taxpayer base and invested in stocks, bonds, derivatives, foreign currencies, real estate, commercial paper, toxic debt contracts, mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and everything else that is ruining the financial structure of the world, its markets, and the livelihood of all the people.

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So what is the difference between the public pension system and the welfare system?

Perhaps the illusion and false-paradigm of integrity is the only thing that comes to mind…

For while welfare recipients (who paid for this insurance through taxation) collect benefits without pride and feel no certainty about their future, public pensioners brag about being on public welfare at the expense of taxpayers and feel justified in their arrogance and future financial security. Ironically, the average pensioner has no idea of his or her disposition of being on welfare at others expense. They believe that just because they themselves paid some of their own money into the pension system (though some do not contribute and these pension schemes are fully funded by taxpayers), this gives them entitlement to receive benefits without even a fleeting consideration that they are actually collecting welfare at their retirement or disability (post-employment).

While welfare recipients get the worst kind of horrific taxpayer-funded health care, pensioners enjoy the benefits and choices of mostly taxpayer funded private insurance-based health care.

While pensioners enjoy buying food, welfare recipients enjoy redeeming food stamps. The difference here is not palpable when considering that both are taxpayer funded and that food stamps represent tax dollars or debt funded by taxpayer debt. Either way you look at it, the taxpayers are feeding both welfare recipients and public pensioners.

All of this pride is based on the illusion that these benefits are based solely on years of personal contributions and savings by pensioners, while not comprehending (or not knowing) that most of their benefits are indeed publicly paid for.

And to be quite frank… I personally have much more resentment that for my whole working life I have been paying for the pensions of government workers while knowing that I will never receive any benefit for doing so, and that at my own retirement I will only have what I saved myself and anything I can scrounge from Social Security. In fact, I really have no problem contributing to the welfare system because some day it might actually save myself, a friend, or a family member from becoming homeless and totally destitute – I may actually receive a benefit from my own tax if I need it. And the fact that complete strangers that would otherwise suffer and starve without this subsistence certainly doesn’t create the same feeling that it does to think of public pensioners living high on the hog after taking early retirement and receiving monthly stipends for life simply for not working as long as all the taxpayers funding that pension fund.

And for those pensioners who just cannot comprehend that what I am saying here is true; that pensioners are welfare receivers based on the collection of taxpayer money, I would like to show you just how much money is spent on the welfare system by all taxpayers and how much is spent on the public pension system by all taxpayers…

I was happy to find that someone else had actually done the research to break down how much taxpayer money is paid for welfare and public pensions by government. Of course, the term “paid for by government” means paid for by taxpayer money. And when this is reported in the financial reports of public pension funds, it is stated as being paid for by “employers” or by the “state”. The employer is government, and again government is funded by taxpayer money. Never forget this, pensioners.

So well written was this article that I took the liberty to copy this well sourced researched presentation here, and give full credit to this site: http://www.ourdime.us/102/budgetinfo/how-much-do-we-spend-on-welfare/

Begin excerpt:

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“How Much Do We Spend On Welfare”

Whenever you see a pie graph that is meant to represent all government spending, you will probably see a graph like the one at US Government Spending or the one at Wikipedia which shows that “Welfare” spending is 12% of the federal budget.  The problem with that is that the government has no spending category called “Welfare”.   Therefore, what somebody calls “Welfare” is somewhat subjective and undefinable.

The Office of Management and Budget(OMB) does have a spending category called “Income Security”.  The two pie graphs I linked to in the introduction just take that entire category and divides it by total spending to get 12%.  In 2009 accounts categorized as “income security” accounted for 533$ billion in spending.  According to the government printing offices’ historical tables, table 3.2: Oulays by Function and Subfunction, that spending is broken down into 6 distinct subfunctions.

  1. General retirement and disability insurance
  2. Federal employee retirement and disability
  3. Unemployment compensation
  4. Housing assistance
  5. Food and nutrition assistance
  6. Other income security

But as I described in a previous post, 3 out of the 6 income security subfunctions go to pensions and unemployment – things that must be earned by working and paying into.

The 3 remaining subfunctions cost a combined 284$ billion dollars, but even that doesn’t tell the whole story.  Over the last week I’ve taken a more detailed look at each of these subfunctions to get an idea of how that money is spent.  What I found was that even in the remaining subfunctions, Food and Nutrition, Housing Assistance, and Other that not all of that spending was spent on the poor.

When I analyzed the “Other” income security subfunction, I  graphed how that money was spent by categorizing that spending into 4 different categories:

  1. Not Directed at Poor\Earned: Welfare not targeted to poor.  The poor may use these programs, but just being poor will not qualify you for these programs.
  2. Direct:  Welfare that’s Direct money to the poor
  3. In-direct: Money paid to 3rd parties on behalf of the poor
  4. Poor & Middle Class: These are tax rebates that poor and most middle class people qualify for and use.

I would now like to extend that analysis to the entire 533$ billion that the U.S. government spent on “income security”.  Here’s how the numbers break down.

Amount of Income Security Spending(in millions) by Type

(Click chart for Larger Image. See The Numbers for  this Chart)

As you can see the vast majority of the money spent in the “Income Security” function of the government is spent on programs not directed at the poor or programs where the income must be earned.  If you want to know how I categorized everything, here’s how I did it:

  • Unemployment and Pensions are classified as not-directed at poor\Earned.
  • For Food & Nutrition, WIC & SNAP(Food Stamps) are “Direct”, School lunches are “non-direct”, the rest are “not-directed at poor”
  • For Housing Assistance, I categorized the temporary “new homeowner” credit as “Poor & Middle Class” and the rest as non-direct
  • For the rest you can read my previous post on how I broke down “Other Income Security“

If you would like more details on why I categorized the programs as such, I suggest you read my previous posts: Income Security, Food and Nutrition, Housing Assistance, and Other Income Security.

If you total up the direct and non-direct spending categories which are all the programs that are meant to help the poor, you will see that the federal government only spent 191$ billion on “welfare” for the poor.  That would be 5.5% of the unified budget.  I counted off-budget programs since the pie graphs in the beginning counted social security and other “off-budget” accounts.  If you only want to go with on-budget expenditures it’s 6.4%, still a far cry from the 12% that most internet graphs will show you.  Just for fun I decided to graph those numbers.  Feel free to copy these graphs to show anyone who thinks we actually spend 12% of the federal budget helping the poor.

Welfare Spending as percentage of Entire 2009 Budget Welfare Spending as percentage of 2009 on-budget expenses

(Click charts for Larger Images.)

Source for all numbers is the Public Budget Database

End Excerpt.

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Now, this is certainly not a complete picture of the amounts contributed to public pensions.

Cristopher Chantrill states on his website that:

“Government pensions spending started out at the beginning of the 20th century at zero percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It increased very slowly during the first half of the century. It was only in 1931 that government pension expenditure reached 0.12 percent of GDP. By the beginning of World War II pension expenditure had doubled–all the way to 0.22 percent of GDP.

After World War II pension expenditures began to accelerate, reaching 1 percent of GDP by 1953 and doubling to 2.1 percent of GDP by 1958. Pension expenditure reached 3 percent of GDP by 1970 and 4.22 percent by 1974. Pension expenditure breached 5 percent of GDP in 1980.

The ramp-up in pensions expenditure began to moderate after 1980, reaching 5.3 percent of GDP in 1990 and 5.5 percent in 2000. Pension spending breached 6 percent of GDP in the recession year of 2009, hitting 6.56 percent of GDP in that year. Pensions expenditure is expected to stay in the area of 6.6 percent of GDP for the next few years.”

Total Government Spending
in the United States
Federal, State, and Local
Fiscal Year 2013
Government Pensions    $1.1 trillion 
Government Health Care $1.1 trillion
Government Education $0.8 trillion
National Defense $0.9 trillion
Government Welfare    $0.6 trillion 
All Other Spending $1.6 trillion
Total Government Spending $6.2 trillion
Federal Deficit $1.0 trillion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, this is translated as taxpayers from all over the United States are paying taxpayer money to fund pensions.

The GDP for the United States for 2012, according to the IMF, was $15,684,750,000,000 or $15.68 trillion dollars.

At 6.6%, pensions made up approximately $1,035,193,000,000 or $1.035 trillion dollars of taxpayer expenditures to fund pension funds.

So who is on welfare?

Are pensioners 3-4 times more angry with themselves for collecting post-employment benefits than with the poor who collect un-employment benefits? Can it be that this collective delusion by pensioners is self-induced? Are they the first to step up and complain that legal requirements for pre-funding of public pensions is literally driving Cities like Stockton, Ca and so many other governments to declare bankruptcy based on that pre-funding requirement? Does it bother public pension welfare receivers that the United States Post Office has had to borrow money every year to cover this legal requirement of pre-funding pension funds with taxpayer money, and has now reached its debt borrowing limit while Congress sits back and watches it happen without changing the law?

Can it be that pensioners refuse to bite the hand that feeds them because it would mean they would not receive welfare payments for post-employment? And they think welfare recipients and unemployed are the bad guys?

CalPERS responded to false rumors that pensions were funded solely by taxpayers by stating:

Myth: The State of California and taxpayers pay the total cost of public pensions.
January 26, 2011

Fact: Investment earnings pay the majority of the costs of public pensions. For every dollar paid in pensions, 64 cents comes from investments.

Public employees pay for pensions as well. Each month State employees contribute a percentage of their paychecks toward their pension. Through agreements so far, State employees are paying 2-5 percent more out of their paychecks toward pensions for a total of 8-10 percent each month. This has saved California up to $400 million. In addition, more than 175 local governments have decreased pensions for new hires.

In this very clever response, CalPERS has just stated that California taxpayers used to pay $400 million more in taxpayer money than it does today. This is like a store telling you that you just save money on your purchase instead of spending it – the latest selling point of grocery stores. Spending is saving; in true Orwellian style.

Of course, if the over $240 billion that is being held by CalPERS in liquid assets were cashed in (liquidated) today for their market value, this would pay for the total costs of this public pension for the next 10-15 years without ever collecting another employee or taxpayer dollar. And if that money stayed invested, for which the return on that investment is stated above to pay 64% of all pension costs, this public pension would likely last 20-30 years depending on investment return without ever having to collect another dollar from employees or taxpayers (employers). Trust me when I say that employees alone could never have built this fund up to this value without California and Federal taxpayer contributions.

Last year, taxpayers of California paid $7,834,616,000 dollars into the CalPERS fund, while employees paid $3,727,600,000  (according to the 2012FY Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for CalPERS, Page 41).

Link to CAFR: http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/pubs/cafr-2012.pdf

I constantly ask myself why the taxpayers of California – the entire base of taxpaying citizens – would agree to pay so much money for the sole purpose of supporting the lavish retirements of just a small percent of that population? And my only conclusion is that this information is simply not comprehended by the vast majority of people who have no idea that their government is spending their tax money on pension funds for its employees. And this goes for all States and the Federal government, which means all taxpayers in America. Why do you allow this to happen… even as the result of this spending is financially ruining your well-being and creating the need for more taxation that is ultimately being created through DEBT???

At some point, even those benefiting form these public pension funds as welfare recipients must see the folly of this madness. But most fall into temptation and will not be delivered from evil. The haves very seldom give up what they have to the have nots, even to save themselves or to save the very system that makes them the haves.

For government is raiding these public funds as we speak, and placing more indebtedness on the taxpayer base to support this looting for “future pension payments”.

In truth, the Federal Government pays more taxpayer money for public pensions than it does for the National Defense budget. More for pensions than for Education. And a lot less for public welfare than we think to support a whole lot more people that need it.

In conclusion, the difference between welfare and public pensions is just one – everybody pays for welfare and everybody qualifies for it. But while everybody pays for public pensions, only a few qualify to withdraw it at all others expense.

The public pension system is the worst kind of welfare subsistence because it is based on privilege, not need.

So why don’t you public pensioners fund your own damn retirement and quit being such parasites on the taxpayer’s back? Isn’t that what you continuously demand of welfare recipients?

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–Realitybloger.wordpress.com
–Sunday, April 21, 2013

14 Comments
by realitybloger on April 21, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Public Pension Funds, Uncategorized, Welfare System
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Posted by realitybloger on April 21, 2013

https://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/public-pensions-welfare-for-the-middle-class/

California Fools Californians Into Higher Taxes Again


With the help of the mainstream media and its rags, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) is yet again using its over $233 in reported investment fund wealth to somehow claim it is in a deficit, despite having an investment return this fiscal year.

(Note here that the actual gross fund balances are generally many billions higher, and were reported as $245,848,527,000 in 2011, and $204,727,543,000 in the 2010 CAFR’s.)

USA Today put out the following story, which was of course originally printed from the false-news clearing house, Associated Press:

“SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The nation’s largest public pension fund collected a dismal 1% annual return on its investments, a figure far short of projections that will likely bring pressure on California’s state and local governments to contribute more money, officials said Monday.

The return reported by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System was well below its projected return of 7.5% for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

The investment returns are critical because taxpayers are on the hook for the difference if the pension funds fail to meet their performance targets.

“The last 12 months were a challenging period for all investors as the ongoing European debt crisis and slowing global economic growth increased market volatility and reduced equity returns,” said chief investment officer Joe Dear. “It’s a clear reminder that we must remain focused on performance, risk and internal controls in today’s financial environment.”

The fund was most impacted by a negative -7% return on global equities. Half the pension’s assets are in equities, Dear said.

The fund, known as CalPERS, runs a $234 billion pension system for more than 1.6 million state employees, school employees and local government workers…”

–=–

In this first three paragraphs we can see the entire scam played out in front of us, as told from a master story-teller who is trying to sell sunglasses to a blind man. But even a blind man should be able to read between the lines here…

So far, we have learned that the CalPERS Pension fund has earned a 1% increase in its investment portfolio, which for this year would have been over $2.2 billion dollar in gains on investments. Yes, that’s $2,200,000,000 when spelled out properly. And this is of course reported as bad news!

Why?

Simply because CalPERS did not reach its “projected” goal. It wished upon a star, and failed to reach that star. It did not lose value or money, it only failed to miss its desired gains. It still did fine, and has no problems whatsoever meeting its “obligations” to pensioners. In fact, if CalPERS liquidated all of its investments today at today’s market value it could easily pay future pension benefits for the next 15-20 years.

So what’s the problem?

That’s just it, there is no real or tangible problem. You see, governments across the country are crying broke or bankruptcy based on this type of situation – hiding assets with future liabilities, without reporting the future assets that will pay for those liabilities. With billions in assets, all of this hoopla is based on nothing more than throwing a temper tantrum because the CalPERS fund didn’t reach what it wanted to reach this year.

It’s true. Nothing bad has actually happened here, as we will see in a moment. But the government creates any excuse it can in order to collect higher taxes,  or to funnel as much taxpayer money into the pension system. Case in point: here the article states that “California State and local governments (will be forced to) contribute more money“. In other words, the government wishes to keep its investment wealth untouched instead of liquidating it to pay for pension obligations to its employees. And so it will raise taxes instead, as the article states here: “taxpayers are on the hook for the difference if the pension funds fail to meet their performance targets.” Remember, taxes fund government. So government contributions means taxpayer contributions, despite the fact that taxpayers receive absolutely no benefits from the pension system, only employees of the government receive pension benefits.

Now imagine if Target, Bank of America, General Electric, or any other corporation out there forced all people in America or in an individual State or local government to pay for its private employee’s pension fund costs. How would that make you feel? Well, that is how the pension fund system works, as this article tells you.

Note here as well that the so-called “loss” on the equity value of stock and investments does not represent a loss of the actual number of stocks or investments. Just because a stock goes down in value for a 1 year period, does not mean that it will stay down. The same amount of stock is still held, and that physical equity has not changed, only this years value.

For instance, the following capital gains for 2010 and 2011 fiscal years were stated by the CalPERS pension fund in its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report:

CalPERS (2011) – $41.1 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

“CalPERS reports 20.7% investment return for fiscal year“

“The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) reported a 20.7 percent return on investments in preliminary estimates for the one-year period that ended June 30, 2011.

This is our best annual performance in 14 years, said Rob Feckner, CalPERS Board President. For the second straight fiscal year, the Pension Fund exceeded its long-term annualized earnings target of 7.75 percent.”

(Source –> http://www.opalesque.com/IndustryUpdates/1880/CalPERS_reports_investment_return_for_fiscal_year188.html)

CalPERS (2010) – 13.3 % increase with a $23.2 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

“The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension, earned a 12.5 percent return in 2010, led by gains in private equity and U.S. stocks, Chief Investment Officer John Dear said.

The $228 billion pension fund earned 17.3 percent from domestic equity and 21.5 percent in alternative investments such as private equity, Dear said today. Its real-estate portfolio lost 5 percent while its fixed-income investments gained 12 percent“.”

(Source –>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-20/calpers-earned-12-5-return-in-2010-chief-investment-officer-dear-says.html)

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Also, in 2009 fiscal year, as with all fiscal years, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report show the following contributions from employees and separately from taxpayers (government).

Employees: $4,154,388,000

Taxpayers: $7,605,532,000

And here is a USA Today article with the headline:

“Calpers posts 16.7% gain for fiscal year“

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Calpers, the biggest U.S. pension fund, earned a 16.7% return on its investments in its fiscal year ended June 30, (2004) best returns in six years, the fund said Tuesday.

(Source –>http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/us/2004-08-10-calpers-portfolio_x.htm)

And in 1998, CalPERS reported a record 19.5% gain in its investment portfolio. Yipee!

So the question you might be asking yourself is… Why don’t the taxpayers get a refund of all of that money they are putting into the pension system when there is a good year, when we have to be “on the hook” to support the fund with more taxpayer money in a bad year?  Not that this was really a bad year, mind you.

–=–

Notice here that I am not mentioning 2008 in this list, and instead giving the reader the impression that CalPERS has gained every year in its portfolio. That is what the news does, you see, but not me. In 2008, Calpers lost a butt-load of asset value to the tune of $58.8 billion due to the financial crash of that time. This was big news of course.

The point here is that a portfolio such as this is designed to acquire as many assets as possible, knowing in advance that those assets will go up and down in the short term, but is designed for the long term. A slow year or a loss is expected every once in a while, of course, and events happen and the economy goes bad and the strengthens again. This is an established reality that any long term investor will tell you.

So let’s here what CalPERS itself says about this years portfolio:

Press Release
July 16, 2012
External Affairs Branch

CalPERS Reports Preliminary 2011-12 Fiscal Year Performance of 1 Percent

Real estate portfolio earns nearly 16 percent exceeding benchmark

SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) today reported a 1 percent return on investments for the 12 months that ended June 30, 2012, falling short of its benchmark that returned 1.7 percent. CalPERS assets at the end of the fiscal year stood at more than $233 billion.

The small gain – despite continued volatility in world markets and economies – was helped by improved performance of CalPERS real estate investments. Investments in income-generating properties like office, industrial and retail assets returned approximately 15.9 percent, outperforming the pension fund’s real estate benchmark by more than 3 percent.

CalPERS performance was negatively impacted by significant allocations to U.S. and international public equities.

“The last twelve months were a challenging period for all investors as the ongoing European debt crisis and slowing global economic growth increased market volatility and reduced equity returns,” said Joe Dear, CalPERS Chief Investment Officer. “It’s a clear reminder that we must remain focused on performance, risk and internal controls in today’s financial environment.”

CalPERS 1 percent return is below the fund’s discount rate of 7.5 percent, a long-term hurdle lowered recently in response to a steady decline in inflation and as part of CalPERS routine evaluation of economic assumptions. CalPERS 20-year investment return is 7.7 percent.

“It’s important to remember that CalPERS is a long-term investor and one year of performance should not be interpreted as a signal about our ability to achieve our investment goals over the long-term,” said Henry Jones, Chair of CalPERS Investment Committee…

Returns for real estate, private equity and some components of the inflation assets reflect market values through March 31, 2012 (not June 30, 2012). Final performance including the last quarter of the fiscal year will be available after asset valuations are completed.

Investment returns are based on compounded daily earnings over the year, including continuing member contributions and benefit payments, and do not precisely correspond to one-year changes in CalPERS overall portfolio market value.

(Source –> http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/about/press/pr-2012/july/preliminary-returns.xml

–=–

In another listed report, the CalPERS system shows that “CalPERS Outperformed Its 7.5 Percent Target 13 out of the Last 20 Fiscal Years (FY 1992/93 – FY 2011/12).

–=–

So what does this all mean?

Remember, this reported bad thing of an over $2 billion gain in net assets for the fiscal year is being reported after all benefits have been paid out to the employees of this pension fund. And so there is no loss at all for the year, and this gain is all profit for the fund.

Also notice that for the last 20 years, this fund has attained an above average return on investments, 7.7% compared to the desired 7.5%. This is the wonderful aspect of the CAFR – it allows you to see previous cycles so as to not be fooled by media sound bites. Here, CalPER’s confirms the data in the financial statements that prove that this fund is wealthy beyond even the stated CalPER’s long term goals.

Simply put, this whole media frenzy was a false flag scare tactic – utilizing incomplete information for the CalPERS fiscal year report as stated by CalPERS to pre-program the people of California to accept unnecessary and unneeded increases in taxation, and all for a pension fund that will benefit the taxpayers in no way whatsoever.

We will not know the true statement of CalPERS financial situation until the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) is released for fiscal year 2011-2012, sometime in the next couple of months.

The problem is, most taxpayers have never heard of the CAFR, and place blind trust in their government and their media when they report such ridiculously contradiction data-sets as we have seen here from the Associated Press. And as government forces taxpayers to contribute taxpayer money into the public pension systems of the Federal, State, County, municipality, and district funds on an involuntary basis every year, the taxpayer base looses over $900 billion into the either of public pension black hole each year. This is to say nothing of what the employees of government are also forced to contribute.

If Walmart or Haliburton corporations required taxpayers to fund their pensions at no benefit to the taxpayers in any way, there would be riots in the street tomorrow.

And if they tried to get away with trying to convince the people (or for that matter the IRS) that their over $2 billion dollar gain in investments was somehow a bad thing or was somehow a loss requiring more taxpayer infusions into the Walmart or Haliburton corporate structure, there would be attorneys, accountants, CEO’s, and Board members hanging from the nearest tree…

What gives America?

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–Clint Richardson (realitybloger.wordpress.com)
–Saturday, July 21, 2012

6 Comments
by realitybloger on July 21, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by realitybloger on July 21, 2012

https://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/california-fools-californians-into-higher-taxes-again/

CAFR SCHOOL: How Corporations Are Funded By Taxpayers


As a lowly young man full of ideas that would have changed the world; and naively believing that I could implement them, I often wondered at how large corporations became so wealthy and attained such incredible amounts of capital for their projects, warehouses, office buildings, investments, and for their global expansion. Why were the tallest buildings in every city I visited always topped with a bank logo? Why were the names of every city’s sports arenas and concert halls being replaced with oil/energy and other corporation names and logos, even though the taxpayers paid for their construction? And after many failed attempts to start up my own small business ventures that would revolutionize the world, I gave up trying to play in the big boy markets, because I couldn’t get my hands on the big boy money. I realized that some unseen hand would not allow me to compete, though I could never figure out just whose hand it was. And so I gave up… justifying and rationalizing my failures on this unseen force that I knew existed but could never actually see…

And then I met a man named Walter Burien.

It is not often in our lives that we come across one man who virtually lifts the wool from over our own eyes, but this was one of those times. It was not so much what he showed me as much as what he inspired me to do. And thanks to him, I was hooked on a little thing called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR).

For months and months I poured over these financial statements for the various types of government municipal corporations, attempting to comprehend the almost foreign creative accounting language and legalese that was presented within – which was sure to drive off even the most ardent of researchers. But for some reason, as frustrating as that learning curve was, I persisted. And finally, after so many years of being blinded by that unseen hand, I can at last see my nemesis…

As it turns out, this foe was the very government structure that had passed the legislation limiting me in my business ventures. It is the same government corporate structure that assigns patents to the major corporations, while making the patenting process either too expensive or too difficult for the average person or small business to utilize. It was the same government corporation that made it so hard to incorporate in the first place, and which created so many fees, taxes, and restrictions that a small business could never really get ahead. And it is the same government that literally owns everything you can see – that has invested over many decades into all private and public corporations, real estate, foreign currencies, precious metals, and everything else worth owning under the sun and around the world.

No wonder the average Joe can’t get ahead!

I have been asked several times to explain how banks, weapons manufacturers, insurance companies, investment holdings companies, health and pharmaceutical corporations, and essentially the entire corporate business structure of the world is funded – why do private corporations have so much extra money to expand, to buy other corporations, and to just in general play around with? How do banks come up with the capital to mortgage the entirety of the salable lands of the world? And where does that money come from in the first place?

As it turns out, the people of the United States are paying for this through their own sheer ignorance of where their own taxpayer money is being taken and invested. And this of all ironies is the most destructive reality for the very people who lack the knowledge of their own governments’ grand conspiracy through its investment fund scheme.

And today, I’m here to wake you the hell up!

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The Problem With Pensioners

–=–

As a public pensioner, what would you do if I told you that, indirectly, you are responsible for most of the problems in the world, from hunger to depression to war?

What would you do if I told you that each one of you as pensioners are voluntarily invested in all of the corporations that are destroying our health, our prosperity, and our world?

What would you do if you found out that because of each one of you collectively, the worst of corporations are being funded with taxpayer money?

How would you feel if you were heavily responsible for the funding of globalization; for building up Mexico and China’s sweatshops and promoting imports to America – and for the loss of jobs in America – simply because you are not paying attention – or don’t know – or don’t care – about what your “retirement nest-egg” is investing in, as long as you’re taken care of in the end?

What would you do if you found out that your pension contributions went to fund the corporate stocks and bonds that are used to build the weapons, the chemical biological agents, and the depleted uranium armaments that are killing and retarding millions upon millions of men, women, and children around the globe, including in America?

What if you finally comprehended that the national and international banks, oil and pharmaceutical companies are all funded by your “contributions”, and that all of the taxpayer’s in America are also forced through taxation to contribute to your pension fund investment scheme (with no benefit to the taxpayers themselves), knowing that the U.S. occupations of the Arab nations like Afghanistan and Iraq are for the government’s and the corporation’s control of oil and opium, and that these beautiful countries and their infrastructures are decimated just so that corporations like Halliburton can rebuild those infrastructures via no-bid government contracts while being forced into debt by the very government you fund?

How would it feel to know that the entirety of the government-contracted corporations that make up the “Military-Industrial Complex” are all funded by our collective pension fund contributions?

What would you do?

Is your nest-egg; your pension retirement benefits… are they really more valuable than the millions and millions of lives lost around the world at the hands of the corporations that your collective monetary contributions support via these government investment pension pools?

If you are a taxpayer or a pensioner (and that’s about anyone who is reading this), then you are absolutely and collectively 100% responsible for all of the above – simply because you don’t know.

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Where Are My Pension Contributions Invested?

–=–

This oh so important question is one that is not generally asked by the recipients of pension benefits. To most, the answer to this question does not matter, as long as there is a return on that investment today that will guarantee personal retirement benefits tomorrow. And this is perhaps the most egregious and shameful aspect of the entire population of America – of all people. For your wealth and the benefits that you receive are directly correlated to the poverty and destruction that allows corporations and government to prosper. In short, as a pensioner, you are being paid for looking the other way.

As a taxpayer, you should know that many 100’s of billions of dollars are ripped out of the tax-base each year and force fed into the nation-wide pension system (including Social Security) in the form of “on-behalf” taxpayer “contributions” for federal, state, local, and district pension employees. This world-wide phenomenon has created an international pension investment system that, in January 2008, Morgan Stanley estimated held over US $20 trillion in assets, and are collectively the largest investment platform in the world. Others with a less personal and unbiased interest in these pension funds make this estimate to be many trillions higher.

We have all heard about Morgan Stanley, as well as many other major conglomerate banking institutions like J P Morgan Chase. They have been demonized as rogue institutions that are destroying the economy seemingly outside of the law or of government intervention – aside from bailing them out with taxpayer money when their gambling habits take a wrong turn (publicly and purposefully that is, because for every loss there is an equal gain by some other entity collaboratively playing the same game).

So let’s examine some of the United States’ Pension investments that are funding the capital liquidity and crime of institutions like Morgan Stanley…

We’ll use the largest public pension fund in the United States, CalPERS.

For those who have never before had the chance to behold the incredibly inconceivable wealth and investments that most pension funds have within, this is a wonderful tool to get a grasp on just how the international structure of corporations that make up the “economy” get their funding. Here is the “Annual Investment Report” for fiscal year 2011, which shows all of CalPERS individual investments:

Link–> http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/pubs/annual-investment-report-2011.pdf

One could spend all day going through this investment holdings report and find just about every corporation in the world as a government investment stock-held company. But remember, this is just one of thousands of pension funds across the country, all with the same investment structure on different levels.

So let’s look and see just how much of your taxpayer and pension contributions in just CalPERS are funding just these two banks as of 2011:

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CalPERS just happens to own 4,583,935 shares of Morgan Stanley, at a listed book value of $98,224,686 – and a market value of $105,476,344.

It also lists its direct stock ownership in JP Morgan Chase at 11,543,471 shares, with a book value of $292,151,725 – and a market value of $472,589,703.

TOTAL (book value) = $390,376,411
TOTAL (market value) = $578,066,047

(Note: These are two separate companies, used here as examples.)

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This represents the ownership portion of stock that this single government pension fund “CalPERS” owns outright in these two banks. The conflict of interest should be apparent here, as this and all pension funds around the world depend upon a return (profits and dividends) from holding this stock investment, while at the same time being a part of the same government that regulates the banking industry. One does not necessarily want a major stock owner of a banking corporation also making the public laws, for instance, on real estate loans and the foreclosure process. But that is exactly what is happening here.

But we can’t stop here, for this is a massive list with many different types of investments into Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase (as well as every significant bank on the planet). CalPERS also lists the following forms of taxpayer monies being given, loaned, or “bonded” to Morgan Stanley:

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(Page 4) “Domestic Cash Equivalents (securities)”

COLLATERL JP MORGAN CHASE – par/market value – $39,800,000 – listed at a measly 0.07% return, maturing 12/31/1949

MORGAN STANLEY REPO – par/market value – $66,500,000 – listed at a measly 0.04% return, maturing 12/31/1949

TOTAL (par/market value) = $106,300,000

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(Page 6-7) “Asset-Backed Securities”

CHASE ISSUANCE TRUST – par value – $1,865,000,000 – market value – $1,887,438,748 – 1.74% return, maturing 04/15/2014

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE ACQUISITION – par value – $7,150,000 – market value – $2,532,394 – 1.32% return, maturing 01/25/2037.

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE ACQUISITION – par value – $27,936 – market value – $8,166 – 0.91% return, maturing 08/25/2036.

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL INC – par value $95,008 – market value – $77,319 – 0.88% return, maturing 09/25/2034

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL INC – par value $2,660,000– market value – $1,866,197 – 0.69% return, maturing 12/25/2035

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL INC  – par value $2,921,764– market value – $2,537,286 – 0.58% return, maturing 11/25/2035

MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER CAP – par value $292,899– market value – $111,961 – 8.53% return, maturing 11/25/2032

TOTAL (par value) = $1,878,147,607
TOTAL (market value) = $1,894,572,071

.

(Note that CalPERS gave these “loans” to Morgan Stanley, getting a horrible return on its investment, often less than 1% – and not getting that money paid back until as long as 2037 and beyond. This leaves Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase to use and invest that money for more than 25 years for future massive profits and expansion. And if these banks lose it? No problem. The taxpayers are always there to bail them out! And your credit card from these same banks, which may be using some of this same CalPERS pension fund investment money to loan back to you via your credit card, personal, or mortgage loan, may have an interest rate as high as 24%!!!)

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(Page 14) “Corporate Bonds”

JPMC CAPITAL XVIII – par value $5,760,000 – market value – $5,740,348 – 6.95% return, maturing 08/01/2066

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO – par value $96,000,000 – market value – $103,112,640 – 7.90% return, maturing 04/29/2049

JPMORGAN CHASE + CO – par value $1,600,000 – market value – $1,656,316 – 4.95% return, maturing 03/25/2020

JPMORGAN CHASE CAPT XX – par value $ 8,765,760 – market value – $8,734,555 – 6.55% returnmaturing 09/15/2066

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $56,640,000 – market value – $62,164,863  – 6.63% return, maturing 04/01/2018

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $45,120,000 – market value – $48,356,731 – 5.95% return, maturing 12/28/2017

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $48,000,000 – market value – $49,159,823 – 5.63% return, maturing 09/23/2019

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $870,000 – market value – $906,554 – 4.75% return, maturing 04/01/2014

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $2,870,000 – market value – $2,798,066 – 0.59% return, maturing 01/09/2014

MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER – par value $1,130,000 – market value – $1,180,195 – 6.60% return, maturing 04/01/2012

TOTAL (par value) = $266,755,760
TOTAL (market value) = $283,810,091

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(Page 51-52) “Mortgage-Backed Securities”

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $308,972,643 – market value – $3,256,324 – 0.35% return, maturing 01/15/2042

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $32,928,000 – market value – $36,647,187 – 6.07% return, maturing 04/15/2045

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $70,560,000 – market value – $77,115,803 – 5.88% return, maturing 02/15/2051

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $274,891,936 – market value – $295,478,211 – 5.44% return, maturing 06/12/2047

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $18,816,000 – market value – $20,331,229 – 5.42% return, maturing 01/15/2049

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $1,085,000 – market value – $1,156,473 – 5.34% return, maturing 05/15/2047

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $1,700,000 – market value – $1,849,798 – 5.43% return, maturing 12/12/2043

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $30,209,893 – market value – $552,778 – 1.40% return, maturing 10/12/2037

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $109,863,895 – market value – $339,216 – 0.94% return, maturing 11/15/2035

JP MORGAN CHASE COMMERCIAL MOR – par value $25,783,365 – market value – $159,792 – 1.17% return, maturing 10/12/2035

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE TRUST – par value $858,671 – market value – $838,576 5.78% return, maturing – 04/25/2036

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE TRUST – par value $308,554 – market value – $260,083 – 2.77% return, maturing 07/25/2035

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE TRUST – par value $1,459,122 – market value – $1,304,019 – 2.78% return, maturing 06/25/2036

JP MORGAN MORTGAGE TRUST – par value $68,035 – market value – $66,727 – 2.96% return, maturing  11/25/2033

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL I – par value $98,784,000 – market value – $7,262,168 – 1.37% return, maturing 06/15/2044

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL I – par value $1,700,000 – market value – $1,789,567 – 5.57% return, maturing 12/15/2044

MORGAN STANLEY CAPITAL I – par value $47,040,000 – market value – $50,482,724 – 5.33% return, maturing 11/12/2041

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $670,407 – market value – $156,964 – 3.00% return, maturing 08/25/2034

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $561,385 – market value – $141,127 – 2.90% return, maturing 09/25/2034

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $1,307,796 – market value – $565,047 – 4.32% return, maturing 06/25/2037

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $4,008,030 – market value – $2,456,630 – 5.14% return, maturing 11/25/2037

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $18,201 – market value – $18,087 – 6.00% return, maturing 08/25/2037

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $1,712,350 – market value – $1,222,467 – 2.61% return, maturing 07/25/2035

MORGAN STANLEY MORTGAGE LOAN T – par value $364,015 – market value – $305,840 – 1.60% return, maturing 10/25/2034

TOTAL (par value) = $1,033,671,298
TOTAL (market value) = $958,096,837

(Yes, you read that correctly. You’ve heard about these mortgage-backed securities and you’ve probably wondered – who was buying all of these things anyway? Well now you know… your own government – with your own money! Your government not only allows these criminal junk securities to be legal and flourish in the banking and investment markets by law, but government also funds the whole financial mechanism so that banks can buy, sell, and resell and re-resell and re-re-resell and re-re-re-resell your mortgage contract until no one actually knows who has the original lien and deed on anyone’s home anymore. Again, government invests in corporations and funds their liquidity… and it benefits from your suffering and from the loss of your home when the bank forecloses. All that matters is that their stock investment and liquidity in the company has capital gains, creates interest, and pays dividends. And your personal ignorance of this is key to the whole operation.)

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(Page 57) “International Debt Securities”

MORGAN STANLEY – par value $4,000,000 –
market value – $5,417,906 – 1.71% return, maturing 04/13/2016

TOTAL (par value) = $4,000,000
TOTAL (market value) = $5,417,906

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So let’s total up these investments and loans and figure out just how much this one pension fund called CalPERS has invested into just these two conglomerate banks:

Direct Ownership Stock Holdings:

TOTAL (book value) = $390,376,411
TOTAL (market value) = $578,066,047

Domestic Cash Equivalents (securities)

TOTAL (par/market value) = $106,300,000

Asset-Backed Securities

TOTAL (par value) = $1,878,147,607
TOTAL (market value) = $1,894,572,071

Corporate Bonds

TOTAL (par value) = $266,755,760
TOTAL (market value) = $283,810,091

Mortgage-Backed Securities

TOTAL (par value) = $1,033,671,298
TOTAL (market value) = $958,096,837

International Debt Securities

TOTAL (par value) = $4,000,000
TOTAL (market value) = $5,417,906

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TOTAL (par value) = $3,679,251,076
TOTAL (market value) = $3,826,262,952

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It is important to understand here that this single pension fund has nearly $4 billion in directly apportioned investments within just these two banks. In reviewing thousands of other public pension fund “asset holding lists” we will find a similar pattern, from billions to millions and down into the smallest of pension funds with mere thousands. But collectively, when all of these funds are considered as one whole government investment scheme, we can easily see that the corporate world as it stands today would not exist without government funding through taxpayer and pension contributions to it, and directly because of these pension investments over the last several decades.

It is also important that we consider what are called “indirect” investments held by these pension funds. While direct stock and bond listings are very clear as to where that taxpayer money is invested, CalPERS (and all pension funds) also invest heavily into the private equity and mutual fund markets. In fact, as you can see, the pension and other government fund structures across the country are the main investors (institutional investors) within these private funds.

The problem? Those funds also invest into JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and most other banks and investment houses. And so to get an accurate accounting of the % of investments that CalPERS actually has within these two financial institutions, we would have to audit its own investments in these private funds to find out where that private fund has placed CalPER’s investment income – and good luck with that!

Let’s see what CalPERS has in a few of these private equity funds…

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State Street Corporation:

STATE STREET CORP – 1,777,017 shares of ownership stock at a market value of $80,125,697

“Corporate Bonds”

STATE STR CAP TR III  – par value $6,200,000 –
market value – $6,202,728 – 5.24% return, maturing 01/29/2049

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Why is State Street Corporation important here?

From this CalPER’s report, it states:

“Our Investment Office staff, pension consultant Wilshire Associates, and State Street Bank & Trust, our master custodian, compiled the investment data presented on the next pages as required by the Public Employees’ Retirement Law.”

So CalPER’s pension fund owns stock in the banking institution that is its “master custodian”, and this bank is responsible for issuing the very report we are reading!!! Yet another blatant conflict of interest, in a bank that is not in a position to go against its stockholder without consequence!

Now let’s look at the Carlyle Group…

This investment giant is infamously connected to the George Bush family, who became president of the whole corporate government structure (not to mention his son), and as you can imagine continues to indirectly benefit heavily from government investments into this “group” – where he and his cronies acquire corporation after corporation with your taxpayer money…

Just what is The Carlyle Group?

“The Carlyle Group is an American-based global asset management firm, specializing in private equity, based in Washington D.C. The Carlyle Group operates in four business areas: corporate private equity, real assets, market strategies, and fund-of-funds, through its AlpInvest subsidiary. In its 2010 annual report, Carlyle reported assets in excess of $150 billion under management diversified over 84 distinct funds.The firm employs more than 890 employees, including 495 investment professionals, in 20 countries with offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and its portfolio companies employ more than 415,000 people worldwide. The firm has over 1,300 investment partners in 71 countries.

According to a 2011 ranking called the PEI 300 based on capital raised over the last five years, Carlyle was ranked as the third largest  private equity firm in the world, after TGP Capital and Goldman Sachs Principal Investment Area. Carlyle had been ranked first in the 2007 listing.

In 2001, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) acquired a 5.5% holding in Carlyle’s management company for $175 million. The investment was valued at approximately $1 billion by 2007 at the height of the 2000’s buyout boom…

In November 2008, The Carlyle Group was named Private Equity firm of the year in the U.S. at the Financial Times-Mergermarket 2008 M&A Awards.

In March of 2009, New York State and federal authorities began an investigation into payments made by Carlyle and Riverstone to placement agents allegedly made in exchange for investments from the New York State Common Retirement System (NYSCRS), the state’s pension fund. It was alleged that these payments were in fact bribes or kickbacks, made to pension officials who have been under investigation by New York State Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo. In May of 2009, Carlyle agreed to pay $20 million in a settlement with Cuomo and accepted changes to its fund-raising practices. (Author’s note: Where did that money go, and what was the point – Carlyle Group certainly didn’t change its criminal methods. How did the people benefit? They didn’t.)

In 2010, the Financial Times announced that Carlyle Group is the private equity firm of the year…

In February 2008, a bill was introduced in California that would have barred CalPERS from investing money “with private-equity firms that are partly owned by countries with poor records on human rights,” which would include Carlyle because Mubadala Development is owned by part of the United Arab Emirates. The California bill was later withdrawn.”

George H. W. Bush, former U.S. President, served as Senior Adviser to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board from April 1998 to October 2003 (while his son was still President!).

So what investments into the bonded liquidity base of the Carlyle Group does CalPERS have on its balance sheets, allowing Carlyle holding companies around the world to flourish with taxpayer investment capital?

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The Carlyle Group

“Alternative Investment Management Corporate Restructuring (securities)“

Name of holding company…..
Book Value……….Market Value

CARLYLE…………………………………………………
$22,892,350…………$55,040,942

CARLYLE ASIA PARTNERS GP II……………..
$123,783,417…………$127,894,756

CARLYLE ASIA PARTNERS III…………………
$140,997,939…………$149,682,813

CARLYLE ASIA PARTNERS LP…………………
$33,716,341……………$72,661,556

CARLYLE EUROPE PARTNERS II…………….
$33,781,818…………..$49,114,244

CARLYLE EUROPE PARTNERS III LP………
$275,068,958………..$269,585,374

CARLYLE GLB FIN SERV PARTNERS……….
$98,610,047………….$112,930,518

CARLYLE JAPAN INTL PARTNERS II……….
$111,350,716………….$101,874,064

CARLYLE JAPAN PARTNERS LP………………
$17,898,023………….$8,194,635

CARLYLE MANOR CARE………………………….
$13,128,107…………..$16,645,859

CARLYLE MEXICO PARTNERS………………..
$11,603,147……………$12,604,035

CARLYLE PARTNERS II LP………………………
$3 ,803,945…………..$7 ,150,317

CARLYLE PARTNERS III LP…………………….
$39,530,330…………..$20,698,248

CARLYLE PARTNERS IV, L.P……………………
$225,810,782…………$288,443,791

CARLYLE PARTNERS KINDER MORGAN…
$29,477,075…………..$68,215,645

CARLYLE PARTNERS V……………………………
$451,370,251………….$528,018,454

CARLYLE/RIVER RENE+ALT ENGY II …….
$140,853,360…………$163,748,816

CARLYLE/RIVERSTONE GLB E+P IV……….
$309,206,623………..$444,256,236

CARLYLE/RIVERSTONE GLOBAL……………
$195,614,177…………..$299,501,436

 “Alternative Investment Management Distressed Securities”

CARLYLE STRATEGIC PARTNERS…………..
$23,175,881…………….$34,972,657

CARLYLE STRATEGIC PARTNERS II ………
$58,002,997……………$79,704,250

CARLYLE/CALPERS CLO………………………..
$99,669…………………..$1,443,533

 “Alternative Investment Management Expansion Capital”

CARLYLE ASIA GROWTH PRTNRS IV……..
$40,863,278……………$48,175,768

CARLYLE ASIA GROWTH PRTNS III……….
$67,338,852…………….$67,445,066

CARLYLE GROUP……………………………………
$175,000,000………….$436,100,000

CARLYLE RIVERSTONE BRAZIL……………..
$17,362,588…………….$2,462,850

CARLYLE VENTURE PARTNERS III…………
$56,071,943…………….$64,646,861

CARLYLE/RIVERSTONEENERGYFDI,LP…
$54,262,246…………….$27,063,846

“Alternative Investment Management Special Situation”

CARLYLE EUROPE REALTY PARTNERS….
$11,107,976………………$7,178,856

CARLYLE REALTY III LP…………………………
$13,542,519………………$15,689,426

“Alternative Investment Management Venture Capital”

CARLYLE ASIA II LP……………………………….
$21,797,371……………….$2,737,812

CARLYLE EUROPE TECH PTNRS II………..
$57,274,489………………$50,288,690

CARLYLE VENTURE PRTNRS II LP…………
$40,025,303……………..$13,678,335

“Inflationary-Linked Assets”

CARLYLE INFRASTRUCTURE PARTNER..
$5,911,590…………………$51,033,705

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TOTAL  BOOK VALUE OF INVESTMENTS IN
“CARLYLE GROUP” COMPANIES: $2,920,334,108

TOTAL MARKET VALUE OF INVESTMENTS IN
“CARLYLE GROUP” COMPANIES: $3,698,892,394

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But we mustn’t forget about the subsidiary corporations owned by Carlyle Group, for these pension funds also purchase stock in these sub-corporations as well as their mother corporation – which can also be considered here as investments into the Carlyle Group itself:

BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON HOLDING – 26,773 direct shares, market value – $511,632

CSX CORP – 3,245,673 direct shares, market value – $85,101,546

CSX CORPORATION (Corporate Bonds) –

CSX CORP – par value $22,272,000 – market value – $25,228,341 – 6.80% return, maturing 12/01/2028

CSX CORP – par value $35,299,200 – market value – $37,628,500 – 6.22% return, maturing 04/30/2040

CSX CORP – par value $1,920,000 – market value – $2,031,062 – 6.15% return, maturing 05/01/2037

HERTZ GLOBAL HOLDINGS INC – 1,404,911 direct shares, market value – $22,309,987

THE HERTZ CORPORATION (Corporate Bonds) –

HERTZ CORP – par value $554,280 – market value – $568,137 – 8.88% return, maturing 01/01/2014

HERTZ CORP – par value $480,000 – market value – $494,400 – 7.50% return, maturing 10/15/2018

HERTZ CORP – par value $1,920,000 – market value – $1,953,600 – 7.38% return, maturing 01/15/2021

HERTZ CORP – par value $2,400,000 – market value – $2,376,000 – 6.75% return, maturing 04/15/2019

LOEWS CORP – 1,086,790 direct shares, market value – $45,742,991

QINETIQ GROUP PLC – 2,078,385 direct shares, market value – $4,027,451

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Finally, lets see what CalPERS has invested in Goldman Sachs…

——————————————————————————————————

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC 1,489,274 direct shares, market value – $198,207,477

GOLDMAN SACHS – “Corporate Bonds”

GOLDMAN SACHS CAP III – par value $3,620,000 – market value – $2,752,503 – 1.02% return, maturing 09/29/2049

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC – par value $110,400,000 – market value – $108,809,563 – 6.75% return, maturing 10/01/2037

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC – par value $4,800,000 – market value – $5,589,452 – 7.50% return, maturing 02/15/2019

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC  – par value $13,440,000 – market value – $12,763,456 – 5.95% return, maturing 01/15/2027

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC – par value $19,200,000 – market value – $19,281,299 – 6.25% return, maturing 02/01/2041

GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC – par value $14,400,000 – market value – $14,788,437 – 5.38% return, maturing 03/15/2020

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These direct stock investments, as I’ve covered in depth before, represent a massive controlling stake in the corporate world, both national and international. And equally as relevant to the corporate takeover of the world, we can see that these “alternative” investments and corporate bonds literally give taxpayer money to the private industries that the government is a major or controlling stock owner of.

In other words, the taxpayers are unwittingly contributing to everything they complain about in the corporate world – to everything that is slowly killing their health and their spirit. Food, chemical, pharmaceutical, medical, banking, insurance, real estate, foreign currency, private equity funds, and everything else under the sun.

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What Could Happen?

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To put this into perspective, a horrific thought just occurred to me…

As of this moment, in July of 2012, these pension systems are owned and operated by local, state, federal government municipal corporations, and administered by their corporate boards for what they claim to be “on behalf of the employees” that contribute to them under federal and state pension laws. And like any private pension system out there, these corporations are at risk of bankruptcy, government raids, credit risks, or other purposeful mismanagement’s that might befall the public, government owned and controlled pension system.

So what would happen to all of these direct ownership stock investments in a worse case scenario – if the government decided to raid and kill the pension system all together?

What would happen to those stocks, and what would become of the debt that these private corporations owe the government (the people) if all of a sudden the whole thing came crashing down?

The answer to these questions, in this authors perspective, would be the final nail in the 4-decade long efforts to completely privatize our government. It would mean that those stock certificates that are held by each of these pension funds would either be transferred into private hands, or they would be sold off for pennies on the dollar in a false-flag depression scenario to the worst of either these private corporations or to some other individual or country. In short, it would mean the largest transfer of wealth out of the public’s hands in recorded history, including real estate, foreign currencies, stocks and bonds, precious metals, and the many other assets within.

But that’s not all folks… for all of those corporate bonds would also change hands, being transferred or sold off – possibly to the very private banking institutions that were the beneficiaries of those corporate bond and securities-type loans in the first place. In other words, the debts would never come back to the pensioners/taxpayers that loaned it in the first place (the public), but instead would be paid back by the corporations to the corporations themselves, ultimately equating to a grand theft of massive proportions via the loss to the taxpayers as the corporations pay themselves back for the debt against themselves as owners of their own debt… a paradox, and yet quite reasonable to these organized criminals.

This would be no different than the Public Private Partnerships (PPP) happening all over the country now, where parking garages, toll-roads, bridges, and other public infrastructure has been sold or “privatized” into the hands of banks and other private corporations – who now operate and collect the tolls and taxes for the infrastructure that was built by our forefathers and our children.

One could go crazy thinking about this…

For it would not take much at all to accomplish this feat. For federal pensions, as part of the Executive branch, a simple executive order might be signed by the president directing the liquidation of the pension system to pay for the “national debt”. On the State and local levels, simple bankruptcy proceedings would do the job, and the people and pensioners would be left out in the cold. After all, the taxpayer portion of the pension system is government property.

This extremely viable possibility could easily be implemented as the solution to the reaction to the problem of the lie that is continuously perpetrated on the American public – that the pension system is on a whole entirely underfunded. In two years of looking, I’ve yet to see a pension fund that meets this criteria, per the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. This lie stems from the actuarial projections (educated and purposefully misleading guess) on the future potential of pension funds. It has nothing to do with reality, and this is easily verified in the CAFR.

The following capital gains for 2010 were stated by the following public pension systems:

New York State Retirement System – $23.3 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

CalPERS – $22.7 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

CalSTRS – $11.3 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

Texas State Teachers Retirement System – $7 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

New York City Retirement – $3.4 billion gain in net assets after all benefits paid.

The pension system is, as you can see here, responsible for globalism at its finest. It is responsible for war, for famine, for disease, and for hunger. The whole world could be fed and clothed 100 times over with just the over $260 billion of investment wealth found in the CalPERS pension fund.

But while the pension system is responsible for these things around the globe, it is the people of America that are responsible for the funding of pension funds. Looking the other way in ignorance and greed must come to an end before the worst happens. The people must take responsibility for their own investment concerns, not relying on government to do it for them. The people must invest in what will benefit all people – from alternative energy to real cures for disease. Personal responsibility is the only solution we the people have left; and if we don’t choose to take responsibility for our own lives, our mother who calls itself government and calls us “customers” and “dependents” will continue down this road until just a few conglomerate corporations remain – as government privatizes and merges its investment held corporate structure into one giant United Nations IMF World Bank holding company.

In the end, I can only ask you to look at this report, and to see where your pension and taxpayer money is being invested… I can only ask:

What will you do tomorrow, knowing that your pension contributions are funding poverty and the the global war machine?

On a mission to document our enslavement to ourselves by our own consent…

.

–Clint Richardson (realitybloger.wordpress.com)
–Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

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by realitybloger on July 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, stock market, Uncategorized
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Posted by realitybloger on July 10, 2012

https://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/cafr-school-how-corporations-are-funded-by-taxpayers/