LAT: Public Pension Funds (activist investors) Forced on Defensive

[DeepModem Mom]

Public Pension Funds Forced on Defensive


Public employee pension funds had corporate America on the run for most of 2002 and 2003. As leading activist investors, the funds were among the most vocal large shareholders demanding that business clean up its act in the post-Enron world.

But this year, it's the pension funds that increasingly find themselves on the defensive. Corporate lobbying groups are pushing aggressively to halt what they consider to be unwarranted meddling by the funds in business affairs.

More worrisome to the pension giants is a legislative movement that threatens their very existence in the long run, by proposing to bar new workers from enrolling in public funds.

The funds, critics say, are unlikely to generate the investment earnings they'll need to cover the benefits promised to public workers. That could leave taxpayers on the hook, big-time.

A number of states have moved to address this risk in recent years by offering workers the option to manage their own pension money rather than participate in a state-run fund....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-petruno5dec05,0,6574346.column?coll=la-home-business

[Ramsey]

1. If public pensions...

If these large public pension funds aren't expected to cover their participants retirement needs, doesn't that have implications for the Bush administration's plan to privatize Social Security through private accounts in the stock market? Won't that create the same problem, at an even bigger risk to taxpayer's?

[AmandaRuth]

2. privatized social security and "activist investors"

equal Americans eating Americans. I hope the boosh union voters think a long hard time about that.