Labor

Is the largest public pension fund in the United States getting ready to dump about $50 billion worth of stocks?  According to a new note from Bloomberg, CalPERS' board is meeting for a workshop today in Sacramento to discuss asset allocations for the upcoming year which could include a doubling of the fund's bond allocation from 19% to 44% which would be funded with a massive $50 billion sell down of equities.

Poor Elon Musk just can't catch a break.  After admitting that Tesla hasn't yet figured out how to weld (a fairly critical task for auto OEMs), blowing through Model 3 production deadlines (which probably had something to do with rumors that 'the most advanced auto OEM in the world" was making components by hand), and firing 100's of employees, the embattled company now finds itself locked in yet another employee lawsuit...this time filed by over 100 black employees alleging racial discrimination.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via www.themaven.net/mishtalk,

Most defined benefit pension plans are nothing but Ponzi schemes. Plans are now unraveling because of demographics. An increasing number of retirees, needing untenable returns, are supported by fewer and fewer people putting money in the system. Democrats sponsored a bailout scheme. Will it pass?

Pension and Investments reports Sen. Sherrod Brown to Unveil Multiemployer Loan Program Legislation.

Last week, Goldman Sachs pointed out a very disturbing trend in the US labor market: where the participation rate for women in the prime age group of 25-54 have seen a dramatic rebound in the past 2 years, such a move has been completeloy missing when it comes to their peer male workers.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

By January 1920, much of Europe was in total chaos following the end of the first World War.

Unemployment soared and steep inflation was setting in across Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.

But an Italian-American businessman who was living in Boston noticed a unique opportunity amid all of that devastation.

He realized that he could buy pre-paid international postage coupons in Europe at dirt-cheap prices, and then resell them in the United States at a hefty profit.