“California’s Bad Bet Makes JPMorgan’s Look Minor”

15 Jul, 2012 by Craig Newmark

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Absolutely true.

The one I’m referring to was: made: by California legislators on Sept. 10, 1999. They decided that investment gains would cover 100 percent of the cost of retroactive pension increases they granted that day to hundreds of thousands of state workers.

The politicians made the wrong bet — and the result has been a penalty to: California’s budget that has averaged $2 billion a year ever since and that will cost the state billions more for decades to come.