CHRIS CHRISTIE, NJ PENSION PLANS AND HOW HE'S HELPING THE RICH STEAL FROM US BLIND

I used to like Chris Christie until I discovered what a scum sucking pig he really was, just like 99% of most politicians. Here in MA, it's primary day and I am not voting because I do not care who wins. None of the candidate seem to have any plans to solve anything, or are running unopposed, so either way, it matter naught for me. When a candidate shows up who has a concrete plan to create jobs beyond the usual boilerplate nonsense, then I'll vote. But from Martha Coakley on down, I could not care less as everyone running opposes casinos and legalization of weed, both of which would create ten of thousands of new, good paying jobs. Instead, we get the usual brand of crap shoveled at us and I am sick of the whole thing, and I write about this stuff for a living.

But back to the greedy pig-man Christie and the Death Star of corporations, the Blackstone Group. Once again, the evil empire known as Blackstone rears it's ugly head, as they are seemingly connected with every underhanded story available right now. They are personally responsible for everything from the coming housing collapse, to the plethora of bad loans to auto sales, to this latest story about how they are stealing pension funds from us while the government blames unions and their "greed" for the current pension disaster unfolding. Just like Social Security, which the government stole all of it from us, now say it is our fault for it being depleted due to "overly generous payment" for decades, when in reality, SS has been underfunded for years due to rich people not paying into it, yet getting all the benefits for it, which they don't even need.

This is from the SEC:

At a private equity conference this week, Drew Bowden, a senior SEC official, told private equity fund managers and their investors in considerable detail about how the agency had found widespread stealing and other serious infractions in its audits of private equity firms.
Despite the at times disconcertingly polite tone, the SEC has now announced that more than 50 percent of private equity firms it has audited have engaged in serious infractions of securities laws. These abuses were detected thanks to to Dodd Frank. Private equity general partners had been unregulated until early 2012, when they were required to SEC regulation as investment advisers.

This is why Dodd Frank gets so much flack because what little good it did still shines a bright light on the many ways we are being lied to and stolen from by both the government and big business.


This is from Blacklisted news:

Since Gov. Chris Christie took office, he has nearly tripled the amount of retiree cash invested in alternative investment firms — many of whose employees have made financial contributions to political groups backing Christie’s election campaigns. In that time, the gap between New Jersey’s alternative portfolio and the broader market has rapidly expanded, costing taxpayers billions in unrealized returns and threatening the financial stability of the $78 billion pension system. The state’s pension funding shortfalls — which have been exacerbated by Christie’s market-trailing investment strategy — were one of the factors cited by Fitch Ratings in its decision last week to downgrade the state’s bond rating for the second time.

“The idea that hedge funds, private equity funds and other alternative investments beat stock-index funds over the long haul is an urban myth like the tooth fairy,” said Jeff Hooke, a former Lehman Brothers investment banker who in 2012 published a study showing that higher alternative investment fees correlated to lower pension returns. “The managers of these big state pension funds are drinking the Wall Street Kool-Aid. The problem with these alternative investments is that they have a tough time beating the low-fee index funds because the fees for alternatives are so big.”

Private equity executive Robert Grady, the Christie-appointed chairman of the New Jersey State Investment Council who championed alternative investments, did not respond to IB Times’ request for comment, nor did Christie. However, the governor responded last month to criticism of his administration’s investment strategy by pointing out that the pension has “over-performed” his own officials’ projections.

So anyone who voted for Christie in NJ and collects a pension, screwed themselves. Here's more from the same site:

Yet, as IB Times reported last week, the New Jersey pension fund’s overall returns have trailed median public-pension returns. And while Grady had promised to begin “lowering the burden of fees” on pensioners, state documents show those fees have tripled since Christie took office, costing state taxpayers almost $1 billion — or roughly $300 for every household in the state.

Applying those returns to New Jersey’s alternative investment holdings, pension consultant Chris Tobe estimates that New Jersey taxpayers lost more than $5.8 billion in unrealized returns since Christie took office.Put another way, Tobe’s calculations show that had Christie officials followed the path of Buffett and other pension funds that invested cash in low-fee stock index funds rather than with high-fee Wall Street money managers, New Jersey would have almost 7 percent more in its pension system than it does today. That $5.8 billion would be more than enough to fulfill the pension payments Christie recently opted to cut.


And the evil entity known as Blackstone has their greedy little paws all over this. What's more, the WSJ wrote in 2011 that $37 of every $100 invested in Blackstone's investment pool came from local and state pensions, proving once again the rich are stealing from us blind. Blackstone is personally responsible for the coming housing crash as they bought so many houses they artificially rose the prices beyond what the average consumer could afford. And now that housing has started to stall again, the housing market looks poised for yet another crash. Thanks Blackstone group.

Because groups like Blackstone are funding a lot of politicians from the President to the local alderman, they have unlimited power and are using it to steal money from pensions, and provably so. Here is a link to a site all about this for more on this:

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/05/05/leaked-documents-show-how-blackstone-fleeces-taxpayers-via-public-pension-funds/

 

The worst part about all of this is how the average consumer is made to blame and not the avaricious rich. Just this week, the BLS released a statement staying that, according to their "study," most unemployed people are spending more time shopping than looking for a job. What a total bunch of bull. They do know that retail is failing right? And McDonalds just hit a ten year low for profits? Even funnier they say the average person "only" spends 2 and half hours a day looking for work. How long can anyone look for a job before they either burn out or run out of sources to find a job? I for one am not driving around using gas I can't afford to find some mythical job that is best found online. The reason people do not have jobs is that there are not any to find. The BLS's own numbers state unequivocally that a majority of people on this country do not have full time work, even though they want it, and are increasingly part-time, free-lance or contracted employees for a limited spell, all of which pay near nothing. But again, it is all out fault.

So for any idiot out there thinking about Chris Christie for President, understand he has demonstrated a complete lack of ethics and is proving to be a thief stealing from the poor to give to the rich. He is a giant douchebag and so is anyone who still supports this fat, lying bastard.