Labor

As if public pension managers around the country weren't having enough difficulty digging themselves out of their massive $3-$5 trillion funding gap, the chorus of liberal governors suggesting they should recklessly abandon their fiduciary obligations to future retirees and choose investments not on their financial merits but rather based on the political preferences of clueless politicians is growing stronger by the day.  As Pensions & Investments points out today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is the latest such politician to jump on the bandwagon after suggesting that the New York S

Update: Add Comcast to the list

#winning pic.twitter.com/QBForn6EeF

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 20, 2017

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With the relationship between AT&T (and Time Warner) and the Trump administration on the rocks, as the DOJ is now suing to break up the merger which just happens to include Trump's media nemesis CNN, it appears that AT&T is offering an olive branch to the president, as well as a little backdoor bribe to improve sentiment, and moments ago announced that once tax reform - i.e., Trump's signature act to date - is signed into law, AT&T will not only invest an additional $1 billion in CapEx in the US in 2018, but also pay a "special bonus" of $1,000 to its more than 200,000 U

Deteriorating public finances in many public cities are creating headaches for some of the country’s largest police departments. The City of Dallas, as we’ve pointed out time and time again, is in a particularly difficult position.

The Dallas Police & Fire Pension (DPFP), which covers nearly 10,000 police and firefighters, is on the verge of collapse as its board and the city struggle to pitch benefit cuts to save the plan from complete failure.

A few weeks ago, we expressed some level of astonishment that the rating agencies, in their infinite wisdom, decided to bestow an investment grade rating upon a new $3 billion bond issuance by the City of Chicago.  Of course, this wouldn't be such a big deal but for the fact that the state of Illinois is a financial disaster that will undoubtedly be forced into bankruptcy at some point in the future courtesy of a staggering ~$150 billion funding gap on its public pensions, a mountain of debt and $16.4 billion in accrued AP because they can't even afford to pay their bills on a timely basis.