'Why Is There Nothing Left?' Pension Funds Failing At Catholic Hospitals

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’Why Is There Nothing Left?’ Pension Funds Failing At Catholic Hospitals

…hundreds of workers at St. Clare’s, which was founded by the Catholic Church, who lost their pensions after its retirement fund collapsed.

The case highlights a more widespread problem: Because of a loophole, many religious organizations are not covered by a federal guarantee that protects most other workers’ pensions, so the workers can get left with nothing.

Failed Pension Funds Leave Catholic Hospital Workers Struggling For Answers : NPR
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this is a symptom of a fractal problem,… meaning the issue of financial mismanagement of pensions portfolios is repeated at different levels w/ in the economy,… for example @ the city level

www.TinyURL.com/13thcheck

then again @ the county level, then again @ the state level

www.TinyURL.com/InvestorWarning

actually the issue has made the news in different parts of the world,…

 
Few things infuriate me more than pension fund failures.

If you didn’t want to pay, don’t negotiate them. If you have committed to a promise, then By God live up to it.
 
I’ve seen this happen to people in other industries too.

One of the problems (and nobody is to fault for this) is that back when the idea of pensions started, nobody expected to live that much longer than 65 anyway.
In general, you rocked along until you had a major health crisis, lingered a couple months then died.
Nowadays, you can have a major health crisis that you survive but at significant level of disability, and live for years like that.

I’ve also known people (or their parents) who had a well planned out retirement strategy, got everything that was coming to them, then outlived their money.
 
Paying out billions in settlements for the crimes of the predator sodomites in the clergy and those bishops who knowingly cover for them may be a large contributing factor to many of these US diocese financial problems today. This alone is a problem that’s bankrupted diocese, forcing them to cut pensions, sell properties, etc. Much much more to come too, unfortunately.

Anyway, that seems like the 500 lb gorilla in the room in regards to ‘why there’s nothing left’.
 
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Pensions are not viable. That aren’t exactly a Ponsi Scheme but they are incredibly close.
 
I don’t think so. It’s not like a diocese has only one bank account and everything that it handles, from hospitals to parishes to schools to salaries etc comes from ‘that one fund’ so that if the one account suddenly needs to pay out a huge sum it’s taken from ‘all the other things’.

No 500 pound gorilla in this scenario but that’s not to say the gorilla doesn’t exist. It just doesn’t have the effect you might have thought it did with regard to ‘money in the bank’
 
Pensions can work and did work for decades when companies actually took care of their employees and kept the promises they made to them. Unfortunately profits have been prioritized more in the past several decades.

Hopefully you all know what actuaries are. Had the hospital hired them and made appropriate funding to the pension fund they wouldn’t be in this situation. They also could have chosen to be federally insured for the pension, but they didn’t do so.

Yes, the trend for companies now is to simply offer 401k, or 403b plans, whereby they simply match a portion of what the employee contributes. This is pretty much the norm except for taxpayer funded jobs at the local, county state, or federal level. Those still have pensions for the most part.

Sad to hear that a supposedly “christian” organization stiffed its workers out of what they promised them.
 
Between the PBGC and funding requirements with a solid actuarial basis, most company pensions work. However, they are expensive - the administrative costs, handling extra funding with stock market down turns and changing actuarial assumptions - and has made companies move way from them. Churches and state governments and cities generally have not been regulated in the same way as businesses, so when they fail there is no PBGC and they fail more often due to failure to adequately fund.

No magic here. 401(k) and 403B plans are simpler and more easily quantified.
 
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johnnykins said:
Between the PBGC and funding requirements with a solid actuarial basis, most company pensions work.
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PBGC Projections: Multiemployer Program Insolvent in FY 2025
May 31, 2018

WASHINGTON - The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Multiemployer Insurance Program continues to face insolvency by the end of fiscal year 2025, according to findings in the FY 2017 Projections Report. The agency’s insurance program for multiemployer pension plans covers over 10 million people.

The new projections show a narrower range of years for the likely date of insolvency of the Multiemployer Program. The likelihood that the Multiemployer Program will run out of money before the end of FY 2025 has grown to over 90 percent, and there remains a significant chance the program will run out of money during FY 2024. The likelihood the program will remain solvent after FY 2026 is now less than 1 percent.

PBGC Projections: Multiemployer Program Insolvent in FY 2025 | Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
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yesterday had an invite to hear what one of the NY fed officials had to say,…

John Williams
President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Vice Chairman, FOMC (@ucsd)


basically at the table I sat at, there was not such a warm and fuzzy feeling given the inverted yield curve and the Repo rate,… since the fed pumped a bunch more money in to keep the Repo rate down,… not too long ago it (the overnight lending for banks) spiked to 10%

consider that the US national debt goes up ONLY about a trillion a year,… seems the FED dumped in about an 1/8 of that amount (142 billion plus whatever they put in on the QT,… to keep this key rate down)


then there is the fact which not too many are aware of that,…
Eurodollars are time deposits denominated in U.S. dollars at banks outside the United States, and thus are not under the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve. Consequently, such deposits are subject to much less regulation than similar deposits within the U.S. The term was originally coined for U.S. dollars in European banks, but it expanded over the years to its present definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar
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it is assumed that the fed controls the money supply, BUT this only applies w/ in the USA,… BUT WHAT IF shadow banks outside of the USA w/ little or no regulation, initiated loans,… in other words created their own supply of “digital” Eurodollars?!

it would be akin to the left hand not knowing what the right hand of the same financial institution is doing,… if you think this isn’t possible then consider the story of various divisions of Deutsche Bank loaning money to POTUS


I’m just a basic science knucklehead that has never taken a formal economics or finance class,… but all my math background tells me at some point the figures on the balance sheet,… don’t balance
 
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