Monday, April 29, 2013
TCP1 overfunded or underfunded?
Right LLNS TCP-1 holds $600 Million more than it needs--that's over $150,000 per person for all 3500 TCP-1 participants.
LLNS just released the annual funding Notice TCP-1 to beneficiaries.
Funding Levels (PVassets/PVliabilities)
2010 154.64%
2011 127.58%
2012 151.59%
How the heck can LLNL insist employees contribute 7% to TCP-1, (while LLNS/DOE does not contribute) when it is so overfunded already? The 600M differnce between assets, $1.8B, and liabilities, $1.2B, is over $150,000 per person, growing at a rate of $60,000 per person per year during 2011-2012)
This needs to be clearly and transparently explained to employees, with sufficient justification numbers provided so employee number crunchers can verify the arithmetic.
At 170% overfunding about 20 years ago, the IRS warned UC that UCRS appeared to be a tax shelter, which is the reason UC suspended employee contributions then.
This seems needlessly conservative, even irresponsible to be taking 7% from employee pockets to pad a well stuffed feather bed.
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61 comments:
Bechtel is raiding the fund.
Can you please post a link to the report? Thanks in advance!
Bechtel is raiding the fund.
April 29, 2013 at 11:50 AM
You are an idiot. You think these funds are not regularly audited by the State and by the Feds? Pretty quick way to put Bechtel and LLNS officers behind bars.
They don't have to raid it directly. They can raid it by using it's investments to pay off other companies they do business with.
Why do they provide zero transparency?
They won't tell us what they're investing our money in.
There is no employee representation on the board overseeing the pension.
They changed many of the funds right before new law forcing disclosure of kickbacks from funds.
If they want our trust, they should do basic transparency:
1) Employees on the pension board (non-members of ULM).
2) Disclosure of all investments
3) Disclosure of all payments for investment services, consulting, etc.
4) Regular report of solvency of the pension to all in the pension.
Why don't they do these basic things?
Leads me to suspect that they're hiding something....
Haven't you been paying attention? The future value of the fund is required, by federal law, to be determined using present interest rates. That formula makes the future value of the fund nearer the 100% mark and not the 170% mark.
Do your math and read the presentations that we were all given.
Pretty quick way to put Bechtel and LLNS officers behind bars.
April 29, 2013 at 2:22 PM
Yup. And even faster to throw the keys away after they are locked-up!
They don't have to raid it directly. They can raid it by using it's investments to pay off other companies they do business with.
April 29, 2013 at 2:42 PM
That is exactly the issue that the government auditors look at. No chance they are doing that. All investments, past and present, and and all income to the fund are examined. All the things you list have to by law be made available to the auditors. If the fund managers choose not to make them available to the fund beneficiaries, that's your problem to fix. Read your fund paperwork. If it doesn't say they can't keep that secret, they can. Time for a class-action lawsuit?
"No chance they are doing that"
Bechtel is doing $30b of projects in 40 countries around the globe with thousands of suppliers, subcontractors, partners, governments, etc.
There's no way our gov auditors are tracking all that stuff down.
Gov auditors couldn't figure out Maddoff with independent researchers stuffing research and tips their way.
Previous 1980s-90s pension frauds were also not caught by gov auditors. They were uncovered by post-pension failure lawsuits. Read "Retirement Heist" by Ellen Schultz.
You have a lot of blind trust in the strength of gov auditors.
I'm much more skeptical, based on the track record on previous pensions, and on their inexplicable secrecy regarding basic facts about our pension...which we're paying serious $$$ into every check.
And LANL's Tcp-1 fund is underfunded by 3% and the members are pouring our own money into it and the funding percentage keeps going down. It's now about $500M under funded.
Not substantially equivalent.
The fund is in a period when its liabilities are growing quickly: think of all us 50-somethings whose age factor gets a kick each year. Much bigger effect than one more year of service. So it may not be prudent to say everything is fine for a closed plan like ours. Not hat I've seen the actuarial study these decisions should be based upon.
Are you people really this dense? Did none of the LLNS detailed presentations on this subject sink in?
There is absolutely nothing mysterious here to anyone who has the slightest idea what they're talking about. But by all means, please continue to believe in some fantasamagorical Bechtel scheme to launder your retirment funds through the thrid world while foolishly advertising it in the Annual Funding Notice. After all, I guess you have to be paranoid and bitter about something. No reason that somethign has to actually exist.
There is no transparency whatsoever.
The Annual Funding Notice is required by law and is content free.
Since you are so knowledgeable and informed, please tell us what our pension funds are invested in.
Fact is, you can't, because you don't know, because none of us know.
"You are an idiot. You think these funds are not regularly audited by the State and by the Feds? Pretty quick way to put Bechtel and LLNS officers behind bars. " ( 2:22 PM )
No, 2:22 PM, you're the true idiot. Educate yourself and do so quickly:
- Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers -
By Ellen Schutz; Publisher - Portfolio (2011)
One paranoid author feeding the paranoia of others. It's never happened before? HeHeHe
Do some homework.
Ellen Schutz is a respected Wall Street Journal reporter. She's no nonsense and factual.
She isn't paranoid, she's reporting facts from court cases from actual pension failures.
You can disagree with her conclusions (I disagree with some of them)...but you can't disagree with the facts of the various pension cases she spotlights.
It's worthwhile to become acquainted with these cases.
You know I thought some of this thread was bull until I tried to look for (and failed to find) an audited annual financial report for LLNS LLC. Granted, I only spent 10 minutes looking though I know what it should look like and generally where to look. If someone has the link to it (if it indeed exists) is like to see if they disclosed investments for the pension program. If employees indeed are kept in the dark about the specific investments in the pension benefits portfolio, you people should be outraged. Please provide links to any relevant documents. Thanks.
I agree. Saw her on long CSPAN interview. Eye-opening. Made me go do a bunch of additional reading to find out more about these cases -- most of which I was unaware of.
"If employees indeed are kept in the dark about the specific investments in the pension benefits portfolio, you people should be outraged."
They refuse to provide that information.
I've written them directly requesting it.
LLNS is plundered by Bechtel in many ways including this.
If gov auditors couldn't stop Bechtel from fraudulently plundering millions of taxpayer dollars in Iraq, I doubt they are going to catch them skimming by diversion a penny ante fund like LLNS/LANS TCP-1.
Fearful little sheep. Grow a pair.
I don't think Bechtel is siphoning the money off.
More like the Pentaverate.
The Rothchilds, the Getty's and Colonel Sanders, before he went teets up!
So is this Bush's fault? TCP1?
I'm just asking, can we still blame him because I don't want to blame Obama he can't do anything wrong.
Except that $16T debt that no one has noticed and no budget for 5 years now and Benghazi and pretty much not doing anything.
Oh and 48 million on food stamps and 50% unemployment for black youth and closing Guantanamo, etc..
Oh he was successful on not saying the words "Muslim Terrorism" and "The Surge worked".
Technically LLNS can raid the pension as it pleases. They will get knocked for it. But they can still do it.
Technically LLNS can raid the pension as it pleases. They will get knocked for it. But they can still do it.
May 1, 2013 at 12:37 AM
BS - LLNS is not like any other private company (except LANS). It exists solely for the purpose of carrying out the one government contract it signed with NNSA. That contract forbids "raiding" the pension funds.
They won't raid it directly, they'll do it via the investments made and management/consultant fees paid.
Read up on how companies did exactly this (and variations on this) and then left PGBC holding the bag over the past 20 years. You'll see they're following a well worn path.
1) Zero Transparency -- we have no idea what investments our pension is making with *our* money.
2) No employee representation on pension board.
3) Forcing employees to pay in significant amounts, in order to "save" the pension
4) Dump "suddenly broke" pension to PBGC -- which itself is bankrupt because congress refuses to let it raise it's premiums.
They can change the terms of the pension. They can also change the assumptions and formulas for estimating the liability, in order to reduce the LLNS contributions in the coming years.
If they are using suspiciously unreasonable assumptions to conclude that the pension is overfunded, that would allow them to not contribute to the pension in the coming years. However, a good accountant sees right through those games. We need to see an audited financial report.
Good luck.
I've requested much more basic information than an audited financial report and been completely stonewalled. They claim they don't have to give us any information beyond the gross assets and liabilities.
How about the employees not contributing, since its overfunded (and they've already been pitching in.
Let the LLC take a turn at pitching in, since they did not contribute last time around (and have rarely contributed).
You people have no choice, they just take it from your payroll.
Using unrealistic assumptions for estimating liabilities can sometimes be worse than pension account raiding from the point of view of the security of employee retirement benefits. If they raid the account because of real overfunding based on sound assumptions, then there is no adverse impact to the employees. If they are overestimating the overfunding just to avoid having to pay going forward, they are putting employee retirement benefits at real risk.
LLNS must suffer through the Bechtel losers that pollute its board. We often see how well UC is managed, even today in input that is occasionally provided, clear, transparent, employee-oriented.
Bechtel is different, and employee is someone to put to work and to dump. Its employees across the board are much less talented and much more poorly motivated, and resentful, similar to DOE/NNSA folks. With low performers on board, group effectivness drops.
The sooner UC drops Bechtel as a partner and picks up Google as a partner to manage LLNS, the better off all will be.
Why do TCP1 people think they have a right to know where the pension money is invested? Where does it say that? What could they do about it anyway? Why bark up a tree you can't climb?
Good point above - Bechtel people are mediocre, can they read and write at a college graduate level?
can they read and write at a college graduate level?
May 1, 2013 at 7:34 PM
Why are you worried about that when your kids graduating from high school can't read and write at the eighth grade level? Reading and writing isn't taught in college anymore. Just how to stare at a computer screen.
Without being an actuary, we can estimate the magnitude of the over/underfunding of the LLNS TCP-1 plan, with some simple assumptions to provide a bounding calculation which should be good to +/- 25%.
Assume that 3500 LLNL TCP-1 participants will retire at age 60, will live to 80, will have a spouse live 5 more years, that they have a HAPC of 12k/mo, and will have 25 years of service when they retire.
Under these assumptions,A fully funded plan with an expected return of capital of 6% should have $1.2M invested for each participant on the retirement date. The plan will pay out $2.4M in future benefits to each participant in this hypothetical.
So the plan needs to have $4.2B for 3500 participants in this hypothetical.
To make a guess as to how much will be available, assume that the plan returns 6% and that on average the participants retire in 10 years (only 5% are retired now). The TCP-1 plan document lists actual market value of assets on Jan1, 2013 as about $2.1B, in 10 years growing at 6%, this balance grows to $3.7B, so under these conservative estimates this proxy has about 90% of what is needed without employee or employer contributions. If the claimants on average collect only 90% of this estimate or if a market return of 6.5% is used, contributions are not needed.
This is an very simple example of the asset and liability estimates that Hewitt provides to LLNS manangement. Since it seems very conservative, Parney should share the actuarial basis for these estimates with the TCP-1 stakeholders to justify the collection of current withholding.
While I agree that more transparency is needed here, I did some reserach several years ago, and found quite a lot of information. For example, you can get a copy of the federal tax filing for the PTCP-1 plan. It had a pretty good list of the investments. The biggest problem is that the deadline for TCP-1 to file the tax form is the end of the following calendar year, so by the time you get to see a copy it's almost 2 years old.
I found the tax form...
It is (Federal) "Form 5500 Annual Return/Report on Employee Benefit Plan".
It includes an independent auditor's report.
It also contans a statement of the holdings of the fund. I see that it does not actually list all the specific stocks, bonds, etc, but it lists them in a fairly detailed breakdown by category. For example, common stock broken down into 9 categories, US government securities broken down into 3 categories, about 24 categories altogether.
It also contains a lot of analysis and lists a lot of facts about the plan. It's interesting reading, if you like that sort of thing.
As I recall, you just have to make a written request to the Plan official, and they are required by ERISA to give you a copy.
The 5500 report doesn't give you any of the information you need to ascertain what's going on.
Missing:
1) List of actual investments made (and timing of) - all you get is generic categories and no timing info.
2) List of fees paid (and for what) to advisers, consultants, brokers, etc.
Also, this report is a couple years out of date by the time you get it.
May 2, 2013 at 7:40 PM
None of that information is required to be made public by the corporation. Also, it is proprietary and not subject to FOIA. For the 401k (TCP2), things are different, since it is primarily the employees' money. Pension funds ("defined benefit plans") are not the employees' money until paid out. Simple matter of law easily verified as such. Get over it.
Actually, the administration cost is given somewhere on the 5500 document. In the most recent year available, it was about equal to the amount paid out to retirees.
Gross admin costs are given, no breakout.
"Simple matter of law easily verified as such. Get over it."
If that's true, we should work to change it. Work with DOE to write pension transparency into the contract with LLNS. Work with our legislators to change it globally.
WARNING!!!The multiple personality HAPC accountantant is now working this thread.
Yup!
Thought I'd try once again to increase facts and decrease diatribe.
Not sure how pushing for financial reporting transparency is in any way "extreme" or "unreasonable." That is just what well-run organizations do. We are lucky to have people here who know the value of these rules, particularly how they help protect other employees who don't have experience or a good understanding of how pension systems work or what financial reporting best practices should be adopted.
I don't want to know any of this. I want to remain ignorant. I want to show my patriotism and trust in LLNS by waiving any right to see any pension information. The rest of you are just treacherous and treasonous for making these constant incessant demands. The rest of you deserve to be fired for insubordination and petulant whining. Financial reports? There should be LESS disclosure and LESS transparency. We don't need the Chinese and North Koreans downloading that stuff and coming up with all kinds of schemes. Screw you all. Traitors.
I want to remain ignorant.
May 3, 2013 at 11:53 AM
You're doing a heckuva job!
@ April 30, 2013 at 10:01 PM - You are so full of hate & bitterness your posts reek. You lost - get over it - grow up and stop the worthless whining. bush was a loser - no wonder you follow him...
Here is LANS Form 5500:
https://lanl.gov/careers/employees-retirees/retirees/_assets/docs/reports/db-funding-notice.pdf
- Lots of detail (66 pages) including invested asset classes and amounts;
- LLNL and LANL's Pensions are held in one trust and may be invested together. Thus, the LANL pension may be a reasonable proxy for the LLNL pension;
- A quick Google search did not turn up the LLNL form 5500, but turned up the LANL form 5500 right away;
- The LANL pension auditors did not render an opinion because it appears some of the accounting did not meet GAAP requirements.
This poor fool thinks the government is protecting him!
May 4, 2013 at 4:24 PM
Not a fool. It's called a connection to reality, which you have lost. Your desire for victimhood is everything to you.
The reports are the same across the country - the nuclear weapons conplex is a treasure chest to be plundered by the Bechtel pirates.
Victimhood???
People are just trying to get information on the state of their pension so they can NOT become victims. Seems pretty proactive and the exact opposite of victimhood.
Your victimhood comment makes no sense. Care to explain your thought process on that one?
Nope. Figure it out for yourself.
Did the LANL info contain any performance (e.g., returns) metrics compared to other comparable funds (strategy, time horizon, etc)?
You whiners are just looking for any reason to complain about LLNS and Bechtel. You start with the conclusion that they are bad, and you just selectively pick out and twist information to bend it to support your pre-determined conclusions. THAT is what Describes the actions of someone with a victim complex.
Just look at the information put out for the last few years. Then read the law on how liabilities are calculated. It all tracks.
There's no mystery and no conspiracy. Quite the opposite, actually. You people are lucky to have a pension that, in fact, is set up and established in a manner that precludes raiding of the type so many misinformed posts cite.
Name some things in the design of the LLNS pension which go beyond the bare minimum required by law.
I'm very open to there being another side to the story, but what facts support that?
Name some things in the design of the LLNS pension which go beyond the bare minimum required by law.
May 6, 2013 at 2:24 PM
Name some reasons why you deserve that.
Just seeing if there are facts to back up the statement that the pension was set up in a manner that precludes raiding.
From my vantage point it was set up in compliance with the law. No more than that. To my knowledge there is nothing special or extra being done to protect it beyond the bare minimum the law requires.
You don't need to answer, possibly others have some knowledge of the matter.
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