[Denny]

Some real scary stuff here.

See New York Times

Seems like this particular representative sees public service pension funds as the property of the state, not the employees.

"Mr. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, is sponsoring legislation that would allow public pension funds to pool some of their money and use it to create a sole-purpose entity that would buy $50 billion to $250 billion worth of preferred stock in America’s banks. That would strengthen the banks’ balance sheets and, Mr. Ackerman hopes, get them lending again.
...
Mr. Ackerman and his advisers acknowledged that some public pension funds had made missteps, but said there was not time to tighten up the whole sector’s practices before starting a bank bailout. There are about 2,700 public pension funds in the United States."

Maybe it is not a good time to be a member of any pension plan. They are just talking public service penso plans now, but the next step will be private ones, just as Argentina took over the private ones, there, claiming the government could manage them better.

It is starting to seem like the banksters will end up with a blank check to take assets as they see them. Anything not nailed down will end up in the possession of the banks. Of course, just as a "loan".

[retiredguy]

Some years ago the governor of Wisconsin attempted to extract funds from the Wisconsin Retirement System to cover a budget shortfall. WRS sued and the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that, even though the participants were public employees, the fund was private and owned by the participants.

This case is probably not unique, but could serve as a precedent if other politicos want to get their itchy fingers on public pension funds.

[ReverseEngineer]

You guys are making the unwarranted assumption that by the time the Goobermint will "borrow" some of the State Penison Funds there will be anything LEFT to borrow. How much does Calpers have left now? Last I checked, their market cap was sinking faster than the Titanic on Percoset.

Reverse Engineer