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Wall Street’s favorite Democrat wants your pension
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/wall_streets_favorite_democrat_wants_your_pension/singleton/The financial services industry hopes to gain even more control over workers' retirement savings
Less than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal alerted its national readership to what was happening in the tiny state of Rhode Island. In a story headlined Small State Gets Big Pension Push, the paper noted that the states rollback of public-employee retirement benefits has turned (it) into a national battleground over pensions. With the help of billionaire former Enron trader John Arnold and his partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, conservative ideologues and Wall Street profiteers who engineered Rhode Islands big pension cuts were looking to export those reforms to other states. Now, after two huge revelations in the last few days, we know more about what that means in practice we know the kind of corruption and damage the reforms mean for taxpayers and retirees, and we know what kind of new muscle is behind the effort to bring that corruption and destruction to other states.
The first set of revelations comes from a detailed forensic analysis of Rhode Islands pension system by Forbes columnist and former SEC investigator Edward Siedle. Commissioned by groups representing public pensioners in the Ocean State, the data-driven analysis ends up reading like a criminal indictment of the speculator-turned-State-Treasurer Gina Raimondo (D), who is now cheerily touted by the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party as a rising star. Raimondo has received such billing from corporatist Democrats in no small part because of her role in helping turn her states pension fund into a private profit center. Indeed, in 2012, this Wall Street-funded Democrat joined with Arnold to champion specific pension reforms that simultaneously slash guaranteed retirement income and give a disproportionate amount of retiree money to the hedge fund industry, thus enriching Raimondos old pals in the financial industry. According to Siedles report, they also potentially enrich Raimondo personally. Here are just some of his reports key findings:
The first set of revelations comes from a detailed forensic analysis of Rhode Islands pension system by Forbes columnist and former SEC investigator Edward Siedle. Commissioned by groups representing public pensioners in the Ocean State, the data-driven analysis ends up reading like a criminal indictment of the speculator-turned-State-Treasurer Gina Raimondo (D), who is now cheerily touted by the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party as a rising star. Raimondo has received such billing from corporatist Democrats in no small part because of her role in helping turn her states pension fund into a private profit center. Indeed, in 2012, this Wall Street-funded Democrat joined with Arnold to champion specific pension reforms that simultaneously slash guaranteed retirement income and give a disproportionate amount of retiree money to the hedge fund industry, thus enriching Raimondos old pals in the financial industry. According to Siedles report, they also potentially enrich Raimondo personally. Here are just some of his reports key findings:
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Wall Street’s favorite Democrat wants your pension (Original Post)
antigop
Oct 2013
OP
Laelth
(32,017 posts)1. k&r for exposure. n/t
-Laelth
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)2. Then damn the whole lot to everlasting hellfire! That's so evil.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)3. these people should be in prison