Union pension plans invest 220b in private equity firms

Here we go... more hypocrisy from the left...

Large public pension plans are pouring more money into private-equity funds, deepening ties between government workers and an industry currently under the harsh glare of U.S. presidential politics.

Big public-employee pensions had about $220 billion invested in private equity in September, or 11% of their assets, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service, which tracks the holdings of pensions, foundations and endowments.

Private-equity funds buy companies, restructure them and try to profit by reselling them at a higher price. That approach, particularly with respect to the fate of workers at companies they buy, has become an issue in the Republican campaign because Mitt Romney formerly led private-equity firm Bain Capital.

The retirement benefits of thousands of police officers, firefighters and teachers depend in part on the profits of investments in private-equity firms such as Bain.

SEIU members have pension money invested in numerous state and county pension plans around the U.S., many of which are invested in private-equity funds. And SEIU members serve on the pension boards that make decisions about where funds are invested.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 50732.html

For those of you on 285 Bound that have a problem with Bain Equity and Mitt Romney's tenure at that company, you may want to look over your investment portfolio and possibly divest yourself from any equity firms in that portfolio. Oh wait... maybe not...

Pension-fund officials say they increasingly are turning to private equity in an effort to hit annual return targets of 8%. Over both the past five years and the past 10 years, private-equity returns were more than double those of the S&P 500 stock index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, according to Cambridge Associates LLC, which tracks over 4,500 private-equity firms.

Ok... maybe my idea about divesting yourself from any equity firms in your portfolios was a little premature... you wear your hypocrisy well.

Liberals... any opinion on this... crickets.

I'll bite.
VC and PE firms are to make money , if successful jobs are created.
I have worked with several over the years and did consulting for a private equity company. They will add jobs or remove jobs depending on the situation.
My problem is that entrepreneurs create jobs. The money people come in to create profit so , Romneys time at Bain was to create wealth not jobs.
He, as an entrepreneur, with Bain itself not the companies he invested in gives him some credibility on job creation.
To be clear, I would not put much stock,good or bad, into his time at Bain.
Private Equity firms serve a valuable function in our economic system and I think he has gotten too much credit and blame. PE firms look to get a 5 to 1 ratio of winners, similar to venture firms.
I look to other qualities for Prez.

jmc wrote: I'll bite.
VC and PE firms are to make money , if successful jobs are created.
I have worked with several over the years and did consulting for a private equity company. They will add jobs or remove jobs depending on the situation.
My problem is that entrepreneurs create jobs. The money people come in to create profit so , Romneys time at Bain was to create wealth not jobs.
He, as an entrepreneur, with Bain itself not the companies he invested in gives him some credibility on job creation.
To be clear, I would not put much stock,good or bad, into his time at Bain.
Private Equity firms serve a valuable function in our economic system and I think he has gotten too much credit and blame. PE firms look to get a 5 to 1 ratio of winners, similar to venture firms.
I look to other qualities for Prez.

Well... the Obama administration is not backing down on hammering Romney on this...

Obama defends Bain ads, singles out Romney at NATO summit

President Obama, leveraging the stage Monday of a NATO summit in Chicago, defended his campaign critique of Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital -- accusing his likely Republican rival of "missing what this job is about" by touting his experience at the private equity firm.

The Obama campaign on Monday initially found itself on defense, after Obama surrogate Cory Booker, the Newark mayor, criticized the Bain attacks a day earlier.

But Obama's reelection team stuck with the strategy, releasing a new web video Monday that tied Romney and Bain to an Indiana plant closing two decades ago.

In response, Romney's campaign released a web video of its own Monday afternoon highlighting the Democratic dissension from Booker and others.
The video, titled "Big Bain Backfire," featured Booker's comments over the weekend on NBC's "Meet the Press." Booker, who has since walked back his remarks, said Sunday that "I'm not about to sit here and indict private equity."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05 ... z1vXnlUYbE

This is going to backfire on Obama. Romney has the perfect ammunition if he points out the multiple public unions who's investment portfolios have a big stake in equity firms investments... and those firms are producing large return for those unions. Obama is not going to be able to have his cake and eat it too on this issue.

Won't be an issue, Romney being out of touch and over stating his background might be.
PE firms make profit, period. It is not a major win or lose. Just a guy that we have to believe can do a better job-or not.
Do you think his Bain experience makes him "know how to create jobs"
That I will be happy to debate, from lots of personal experience.
If you were investing other peoples money would you not invest in a diversified portfolio to get them the best return? Or would you invest only in what you thought was "correct"?

jmc wrote: Won't be an issue, Romney being out of touch and over stating his background might be.
PE firms make profit, period. It is not a major win or lose. Just a guy that we have to believe can do a better job-or not.
Do you think his Bain experience makes him "know how to create jobs"
That I will be happy to debate, from lots of personal experience.
If you were investing other peoples money would you not invest in a diversified portfolio to get them the best return? Or would you invest only in what you thought was "correct"?

I don't know squat about investing... I was one of the first Ebay members, signed up 4-1996, only about 8 months after Omidyar started the website... it was free and it was rather simple. I sold 10-15 thousand dollars worth of items a year (I dealt with antique and contemporary slot machines and other coin operated antiques) and I saw all the changes to the site, all the increased traffic to the site and when they IPO'd, I didn't even think about investing, even though I had a lot of "insight" about the success of the business. But I do know something about unions. And if they are investing with equity firms, then there must be something highly profitable about them.

And for the left to be trashing equity firms in general, while at the same time profiting quite nicely from them, is the height of dishonesty to me. Then I guess you could ask "Do you think his Bain experience makes him not know how to create jobs?" I can't debate because I don't have the understanding of all this investment stuff. I've been a very successful self taught programmer, rather intelligent in that area (and you know about the rest of the story) but I've never been able to grasp the whole stock market/investing thing. Maybe my lost. Who knows. So I'm not going to argue something I don't understand.

I did make a rather good investment decision recently in regards to FaceBook... once again I didn't invest. That's one for Ebay and one for me.

Just politics, It will come down to who the voters think can do the best job. the rest is side show.
Neither party is serious about doing anything worthwhile, they are going to pander to their constituencies.
Pick your team and hope for the best.

There is no doubt that private equity firms can make good money for their investors...as can vulture capitalists like Romney....
The thought of electing someone to the presidency whose prime focus in his life has been to make money for himself and other wealthy investors definitely concerns me. Leopards do not change their spots just because they get elected to public office. Seriously....where do you think Romney's loyalty will be? To the wealthy in America or the workers who desperately need jobs?

You must have missed the point. The point is that a lot of people depend on private equity firms making lots of money to fund their pension programs so that Social Security isn't all they are left with to live on when their working days are done - when they retire at 55 on 80% of the average of their final 3 years of salary - which can, incidentally, be bumped way up if you simply have your benefits paid out of after tax income instead of pre-tax income for 3 years before you retire; but I digress from the point I was making that private equity firms such as Bain make a lot of money for a lot of people besides the folks with the corner offices. Their investors include a lot of public sector union pension and medical plans - and making a lot of money for those investors helps the "common man" retire much better than they could otherwise.

Face it archer - the high standard of living we have means that our domestically manufactured products for everyday consumption - textiles, hardware, tools and lots of other things - can't be competitive in the export market, which means that our domestic manufacturing firms are basically reduced to supplying our small domestic market of 330 million or so until other countries significantly raise their standard of living to the point where their labor market is as high priced as ours is and the costs imposed by their government's regulations start approaching ours. An automated knitting machine runs just as fast in Singapore as it does in Alabama after all, with no loss in quality of product. An automated welder used in the manufacturing of automobiles runs just as good in China as it does in California or Tennessee too. The automated machines which turn cotton and nylon into threads and fabric don't care if they are running in Thailand or Mississippi for that matter either.

The only thing we have left to export is our domestically produced innovations and ideas that come from living in a place where we are still relatively free compared to most other places. Our meritocracy mindset is what allows people willing to work and work hard to escape the class they were born into - but that too seems to be disappearing from our exceptionalism model as we seek to be more like everyone else and spread the wealth around from the creators, the innovators and the risk takers to those who do a lot less innovating, a lot less creating and prefer safety to taking risks. In 150 years or so we've gone from a nation whose chief executive taught himself to read, taught himself the law and taught himself the geometry of surveying to a nation where we have a chief executive who says he couldn't have gotten to where he is today without other people picking up the tab for him. That's progress alright.

archer wrote: There is no doubt that private equity firms can make good money for their investors...as can vulture capitalists like Romney....
The thought of electing someone to the presidency whose prime focus in his life has been to make money for himself and other wealthy investors definitely concerns me. Leopards do not change their spots just because they get elected to public office. Seriously....where do you think Romney's loyalty will be? To the wealthy in America or the workers who desperately need jobs?

What makes one side of the coin "private equity firms can make good money for their investors" so different from "vulture capitalists like Romney?" He ran an equity firm. You're comment is exactly the question I'm trying to get at on this thread. Union invested equity firms "good," Romney's equity firm "bad." You didn't answer the question, you repeated it. Tell me what's the difference between the equity firms... not why you don't like Romney.