General Ret system 2012 report

[slick]

As a retired union employee I received the Annual report for 2012. I have not opened the glossy paged colored front page report. Have any other retirees read their mail?

[jt1]

As a retired union employee I received the Annual report for 2012. I have not opened the glossy paged colored front page report. Have any other retirees read their mail?

Seems like sending out nice, glossy reports to thousands of retirees is a good use of money.

Has the pension system heard of posting PDFs?

[Honky Tonk]

Seems like sending out nice, glossy reports to thousands of retirees is a good use of money.

Has the pension system heard of posting PDFs?

What? And put someone's brother in law out of business?

[Hermod]

What? And put someone's brother in law out of business?

No sense wasting the money on retirees especially with the bankruptcy court closing in and possibly shutting off the honey pot.

[313WX]

Seems like sending out nice, glossy reports to thousands of retirees is a good use of money.

Has the pension system heard of posting PDFs?

The only problem with that idea is that I bet a fair share of the retirees don't use the computer.

[Honky Tonk]

The only problem with that idea is that I bet a fair share of the retirees don't use the computer.

That's right, all people over 25 are too stupid or senile to use one....... Anyone know how to turn the crank on this "phone" thing?????

[corktownyuppie]

Technology preferences aside, I believe the reason why you receive pension reports by mail is because they are required to be sent by law.

[Honky Tonk]

Technology preferences aside, I believe the reason why you receive pension reports by mail is because they are required to be sent by law.

You may be right, but in thick, multi-color paper stock? I would think in this day and age that kind of thing would go the way of the house phone. [[the one with a crank)

[slick]

Now that the glossy computer illiterate comments are out of the way, I did try to read the report.
Page 2 intro by Susan Glaser , Chairperson. It mentions assets of 2 billion dollars. It is only 77% funded.
The rest is a lot of numbers ad figures that looks pretty rosy.

[cla1945]

As a City of Detroit retiree, I feel this annual report is redundant....2012? Why bother? It's 2014, this is two years old. I know many general city employees and they have always received these reports 2 years late. A day late and millions of dollars short!!!

[Wesley Mouch]

You may be right, but in thick, multi-color paper stock? I would think in this day and age that kind of thing would go the way of the house phone. [[the one with a crank)

Its obvious the pension boards should be prudent. But I'm not too worried about printing costs.

If this is how they printed in the past, then let it go this time.

[313WX]

That's right, all people over 25 are too stupid or senile to use one.......

I didn't say that at all.

But back to what I did say, what other reason do you think it would be required by law [[assuming it is) that the pension reports are printed and mailed out?

[Hermod]

I didn't say that at all.

But back to what I did say, what other reason do you think it would be required by law [[assuming it is) that the pension reports are printed and mailed out?

Dunno about pensions, but publicly traded corporations are required to send out hard copy annual reports unless the stockholder requests them in electronic form. I believe they have to be sent out within 90 days of the close of the corporation's fiscal year.

[313WX]

Dunno about pensions, but publicly traded corporations are required to send out hard copy annual reports unless the stockholder requests them in electronic form. I believe they have to be sent out within 90 days of the close of the corporation's fiscal year.

As of 2007, the SEC only requires companies to send out a notice [[because naturally it decreases printing costs and appeases the environmentalists). In that notice, they're informed that the reports have been posted online, but there are instructions in the notice to request their own personal hard copy.

Now perhaps that's something the COD pensions funds can consider doing going forward, but still keep in mind we're talking about an organization associated with the completely dysfunctional entity that was still processing payroll by paper as recently as 2012.

Either way, I'm not sure why people took offense to what I said before. In the past, sending out hard copy reports was a requirement outright because 20 years ago, there was [[more or less) no way to access this information electronically. Now, although it's far easier to access the data electronically, there are still many folks [[for whatever reason) who don't use the computer or whatever and should still receive hard copies.

Why would a functional entity voluntarily spend the money to send everyone hard copy reports when there are [[especially now) much cheaper method?

[Hermod]

Why would a functional entity voluntarily spend the money to send everyone hard copy reports when there are [[especially now) much cheaper method?

The pension fund is a big honey pot which from the perspective of the administrators is bottomless and ever-filling. It won't run dry in their term of service and their graft is just a drop in the bucket.

[Honky Tonk]

Why would a functional entity voluntarily spend the money to send everyone hard copy reports when there are [[especially now) much cheaper method?

Why would a floundering entity send representitives to a Hawiian conference @ $25k a head? My apologies to 313WX. YES, There are still some people left that won't take the time to learn to use or buy a PC, and should receive statements by snail-mail. That doesn't mean, though, the statements need to be color, glossy, photo-books, @ $15 a pop, nor should they be sent to everyone concerned.

[313WX]

Why would a floundering entity send representitives to a Hawiian conference @ $25k a head?

Because the floundering entity is dysfunctional and poorly managed?

[Honky Tonk]

Because the floundering entity is dysfunctional and poorly managed?

Absolutely. People are still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact the party's over. They still think it's 1959.

[Wesley Mouch]

Absolutely. People are still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact the party's over. They still think it's 1959.

The party's not over till you can't take your $25k Hawaii adventure with a copy of your hardcover, glossy, $15/copy report.

Why would you think the party's over? Their retirees may get a haircut -- but what evidence is there that the pension boards have been reformed?

I fully expect them to continue to behave as they were. After all, they took the 100% against the EFM/EM/bankruptcy path. See, they're doing a great job. Just ask them. So let's go get lei-ed.

[Honky Tonk]

The party's not over till you can't take your $25k Hawaii adventure with a copy of your hardcover, glossy, $15/copy report.

Why would you think the party's over? Their retirees may get a haircut -- but what evidence is there that the pension boards have been reformed?

I fully expect them to continue to behave as they were. After all, they took the 100% against the EFM/EM/bankruptcy path. See, they're doing a great job. Just ask them. So let's go get lei-ed.

Nice........ and you ARE right.

[Dumpling]

http://www.rscd.org/Intro_2012%20GRS...l%20Report.pdf

This should be the introductory section of the GRS 2012 Annual Report.
I am looking over this report prior to deciding how to vote on the Grand Bargain.
Supposing the GRS is very healthy the Grand Bargain does not need to take
the pensioners into account.

[corktownyuppie]

http://www.rscd.org/Intro_2012%20GRS...l%20Report.pdf

This should be the introductory section of the GRS 2012 Annual Report.
I am looking over this report prior to deciding how to vote on the Grand Bargain.
Supposing the GRS is very healthy the Grand Bargain does not need to take
the pensioners into account.

Will give you a headstart....

As of June 30, 2012 the actuarial accrued assets of the Retirement System totaled $2,806,489,202. The actuarial valuation as of June 30, 2012 reflects an unfunded actuarial accrued liability of $837,683,371. This is the difference between the net assets available for benefits and the actuarial liability calculated for the Retirement System. These “unfunded actuarial accrued liabilities” are being amortized over future years.

That puts the pension at 73% funding. [[837k/[[2806k+837k)). Which means the pension shortfall is 27%. In the past this shortfall could be made up by borrowing the funds to spread the shortfall out over several decades. But Detroit no longer has borrowing ability to do so.)

[Novine]

Didn't Orr stop the city's contributions to the pension funds too? If so, that will only exacerbate the shortfall.

[Packman41]

http://www.rscd.org/Intro_2012%20GRS...l%20Report.pdf

This should be the introductory section of the GRS 2012 Annual Report.
I am looking over this report prior to deciding how to vote on the Grand Bargain.
Supposing the GRS is very healthy the Grand Bargain does not need to take
the pensioners into account.

Dumpling:

If your concern is that your fund is healthy or not then you need to read this too:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/tr...7_406186_7.pdf

It is the Financial Report for the GRS for the year ending June 30, 2012 and should tie to the item you posted. I would ask you to take a look at the chart on the upper part of page 15 or 17/44 of the above pdf. This shows the Credit Rating Risk of the Debt [[Bond) Portfolio portion of the pension fund.

• Investment Grade: AAA is top rating and BBB are Low to Mid risk – 18.7% of the portfolio
• Non-Investment Grade: BB is non-investment and Below B is speculative – 15.2%
• Not Rated NR: Not traded on the open market, so unrated/questionable – 66.1%

So 81.3% of the bond portfolio is either below investment grade quality or so far off the grid that they cannot be rated. IMHO this is a high speculative mix of bonds and NOT appropriate for anyone’s retirement portfolio.

Meanwhile, on the link you posted you need to review a couple of pages:

Page 5 [[4/7): Notice the difference between the Target Asset Allocation and Actual Allocation for Alternative Investments. These are traditionally the riskier asset classes. The GRS has 33.1% of their money here when their target is a more reasonable 22.0%. They need to reduce this riskier class by 1/3 and move it into some safer asset classes.

Page 6 [[5/7) Who, exactly, on this page has the financial investment experience and training to truly manage a multi-billion dollar investment fund? Do you know their background? Can they hit the ground running? Are you confident that they [[or their replacements) know precisely what they are doing and won’t have to go to Hawaii for a training “seminar”?

Hope this gives you some guidance to do the right thing.

[corktownyuppie]

Dumpling:

If your concern is that your fund is healthy or not then you need to read this too:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/tr...7_406186_7.pdf

It is the Financial Report for the GRS for the year ending June 30, 2012 and should tie to the item you posted. I would ask you to take a look at the chart on the upper part of page 15 or 17/44 of the above pdf. This shows the Credit Rating Risk of the Debt [[Stock) Portfolio portion of the pension fund.

I could be wrong, as I haven't looked deeply into it, but this is also my wheelhouse so take that for what it's worth.. Generally, "credit rating risk" and "debt portfolio" refers to fixed income and bond investments, not stock investments.

My bigger issue is with the assets listed on p. 7.

Equity interest in real estate accounts for $224 million.
Private placements account for $350 million.

These types of investments are not publicly traded, and, therefore, are impossible to value in a real-time basis. This does *not* make them bad investments, necessarily, but they are the types of investments which are very easily used to conceal fraud and graft.

[[For example, if you wanted to pay me a $20,000 kickback, one way to hide it would be pay me $70,000 cash for my $50,000 property. It eliminates shady exchanges of cash in dark alleys and what not.)

Given the fraud history of the pension trustees, it is very to hard to know whether or not this is an accurate appraisal of investments held.

=============

So in conclusion, when you combine:

[[1) the already clear 25%+ shortage in the pension fund,
[[2) the city's former practice and now inability to borrow money to cover the shortfall,
[[3) the suspension of the city funding the pension fund, and
[[4) over $570MM in assets whose valuations are questionable given the highly documented graft, bribery, and embezzlement problems....
[[5) the offer from the Grand Bargain to reduce your shortfall to 5% [[and the risk that losing in court means losing a quarter of your pension),

I'd say you should probably take the deal. That's just me, though, and everyone has to vote their conscience on it.