The Teamster’s Central States pension fund, which was forced into the hands of Wall Street because it was “corrupt” is now approaching insolvency. Under the managment of pricey investment banks, the money is vanishing and pensions for retirees are being cut.
How could this happen?
But the kinds of investments that make sense for such a fund – like long-term bonds that will mature as members enter retirement – are not attractive to most money managers, because they generate few fees. Consequently, very few pension funds use such strategies today.
Translation: They didn’t give a fuck about the retirees and instead generated fat fees for themselves with risky investments. Now many retired Teamsters are having their pensions slashed. And none of this needed to happen.
In fact, the pension fund did much better when the money was used to build Las Vegas hotels.
Union pension funds performed better when run by mobsters rather than Wall St. firms.
“Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss”, except in this case, the new boss is even more predatory, avaricious – aa well as incompetent. At least the mob returned the money with a profit to the pension fund.
This is just another example of the massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy that is going on unabated. The Bushies want to privatize Social Security and let Wall Street run the money. Given the above do you think your retirement money will be safe?