Quote Originally Posted by Packman41 View Post
You mean a "rant" such as the editorial in the April 1 edition of the Detroit News?
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...uld-save-money

"They lost $2.5 billion of their value, or 30 percent, from June 2007 through December 2008 as a result of market losses and investments that went bad, according to published reports last year. Other pension plans also took a beating during the national recession, but average losses were considerably lower than that.
A Detroit pension board leader has pointed out that the two plans were fully funded prior to the economic downturn and remain 90 percent funded today. But Bing and his associates say they would be about $1.2 billion richer had they been under control of the state retirement system."

Remember, any underfunding or poor investment performance is guaranteed by the taxpayers. There is no real incentive for the pension board members to perform well and the money is subject to their political whims.


No, that wasn't a rant. It was just a biased editorial.

Quotes from unnamed officials aside, the financial report says it is 99% funded. If you can't believe Detroit's financial report, you can't believe MERS financial report. They use the same accounting practices and reporting methodology.

The editorial points to one year, that was actually two fiscal years ago. Over a five-year or ten-year period, Detroit outperforms MERS. In the year that Detroit's pensions lost 30%, MERS lost 25%, so no, Detroit's pensions would not have gained more under MERS. Plus, you cannot argue with the fact that MERS reports over the past years shows a steady decline in the percent-funded category [[which points to solvency). Eventually, this shortage will cost future taxpayers in those municipalites that are a part of MERS.

I'm less interested in opinions and feelings than I am with numbers. And I'm very good at knowing when an editorial [[or any other report for that matter) is skewing the information. It is so very obvious. The editorial gives no numbers for MERS. Why is that?

Check the reports for the past five years and tell me they prove me wrong. Bing has not shown how he is going to save $20 million [[the editorial simply quotes Bing, it doesn't provide any facts). Also, other than the one year where all funds were hit hard, Bing should provide information on which years the City has had to make up shortages cause by underperformance of the pension. Surely the public would want to know that piece of information. Rather than just the speculation about what they might have to do if the pension underperforms.