UC Pension Troubles. Might be a good thing that TCP-1 was split out...
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395685/ucs-pension-fiasco-lawrence-j-mcquillan
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395685/ucs-pension-fiasco-lawrence-j-mcquillan
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
Comments
It does not look like it is. Afet all it is the national review
January 7, 2015 at 7:27 PM
Indeed, however it is even worse if you took TCP-1 when LANS took over. I guess either it is not good. It will only get worse with the new contract change in 2017.
January 8, 2015 at 10:31 PM"
It appears that TCP-1 is being managed better than UCRP. It has been 15 years since the UC Regents outsourced management of UCRP to their friends in the financial industry. Before that, it was being managed out of UC Presidents Office, and doing so well that we didn't need to contribute, and were the recipients of huge windfalls on more than one occasion. Now, it's annualized return is barely keeping up with inflation! See Charlie Schwartz'(UC, Berkeley) articles for details of this fiasco: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/
While at the NNSA labs, any need to increase funding of the TCP1 pension will come from the hide of TCP1 employee salaries. It could get even more painful for some lab workers if TCP1 finds is necessary to further boost pension assets.
Increase in TCP1 funding will be collected from the employee and the employer correct? If you have reason to believe LLNS won't share the pension funding burden in the future please explain why. I know there were concerns with LLNS in the past over their contribution amount and its timing. It would be useful to have real TCP1 pension fund transparency instead of just TCP1 rehearsed talking points from management.
Parney acted in a responsible manner and paid attention to the LLNL TCP-1 funding levels. As a result, they are in a pretty good condition now. Since it looks like LLNS will be around for several more years, then the burden remains on them to maintain the health of the balance.
LANL TCP-1 is about to be in a world of hurt, due to the upcoming contract change. It will take a busload of accountants to determine which organization will pay what into the plan. No matter the result, as soon as LANS is gone, then the problem belongs to whatever group follows on. It is hard to see any good news anywhere in this scenario for those that opted for TCP-1 at the time of UC transition.
All good points, but if we are not situationally aware, "maintain" could simply mean anything from increased employee pension contributions to reduced pension benefits in some manner.
Let's acknowledge though, that someone or a team of knowledgable LLNS pension managers have done a pretty good job with the fund so far. A point sometimes lost.
I worry less about the track record and skill set of the direct TCP1 pension managers and more about the LLNS "for profit" bean counters, that are not necessarily one in the same.
For a small fraction of UCs total budget (<1%) , California taxpayers children lose 2000 (1/3 of) seats the best two public Universities. Each year.
Fact check it. Unlike the lies that Tyler Pryzbylek weaves, this is true.
"Nappy-politano" is now another California politican/fool...
The trend to increase out-of-state enrollment started well before President Napolitano joined UC. The majority of UC's budget is research funds, and the overhead on that provides a lot of added money to campuses. The instructional budget largely comes from state funds and tuition.
Another perspective:
The University of California receives $460 million less in state funding than it did in 2007–08, even though it enrolls more California students than ever...
I actually think Governor Brown will win this standoff, but I don't know that is a good thing.
January 10, 2015 at 2:43 PM
Ho hum, you are parroting the article without adding any value or bothering to think.
I may have a partial answer to your question. I believe effective ~July 2013 UC radically changed its pension and retirement medical benefits. If I recall correctly, those UC employees with age + service =>50 stay on the old pension terms (grandfathered), and everyone else falls under the new and significantly less attractive new pension and medical in retirement terms. Essentially they were age factor changes for pension and medical in retirement benefits. This was their answer back then to address UC pension shortfalls.
http://ucrpfuture.universityofcalifornia.edu/news-updates/retiree-health-benefit-changes-coming-in-july/
I wouldn't worry about UC or LLNS or LANS. The real enemy of you pension will be your very own federal government. They make the rules and they'll take it all when they finally need another source of assets to save our bankrupt system. Don't think for a minute that they won't seize it and then replace it with something pretty much worthless. They can and they will when the time arrives.
UCRS and STRS are patticularly at risk, becausevthe are somewhat underfunded on a current basis and they use unusual expected returns of about 7 % because they are a government agency. ERISA forces private pension plans to use its number which is closer to 4.5%.
An increase in employee paid TCP1 contributions, or other equally bad pension measures, could be taken off the shelf and un-shrink wrapped after any material market correction opportunity.
It would be nice not to be a "deer in the headlights" after NNSA and LLNS drop TCP1 pension fund contingency plan X on our collective laps.
Is closer and continual TCP1 examination unreasonable or unwarranted given the pension is doing well at the present time?
I would sleep better if it a process open to members with open meetingvs, public record, and an elected a voting member representative on both the TCP-1 governing board and on the investment committee.