Jim Hamilton, one of the smart economists, scorches a California municipal pension fund for a bonehead strategy. Read the blurb and have a feeling of
Big Whoops this will end badly for Sane Diego taxpayers.
Kevin Faulconer, the mayor, will lose his job when this crashes.
The unfunded liabilities of the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association
have increased every year for the last five years, reaching $2.45
billion last year, more than quintuple the level in 2008. The
calculation of how big the shortfall is assumes that the fund is going
to be able to earn a 7.75% return on its investment after subtracting
administrative costs. If it earns less than 7.75%, the shortfall will be
even bigger. A 10-year Treasury bond currently pays 2.4%, and a typical
stock has a dividend yield under 2%. So what do you do if you’re in
charge of the system’s $10 billion in assets?
One thing you could do is ask the taxpayers for more money right now.
What the SDCERA board did instead was to approve a strategy that is supposed to increase the return on the fund’s assets.
And how do you do that, exactly? Suppose you invest $50,000 outright
in the S&P 500. If the market goes up 1%, next year it will be worth
$50,500, and you’ve earned 1% on your investment. (I’m going to ignore
the role of dividends, which complicate a little the calculations I’m about to describe, but don’t change the basic story.)
Or you could use your $50,000 to cover the initial margin
requirements for a couple of S&P 500 futures contracts, which would
have a notional value of around a million dollars. That means that if
the market goes up 1%, the notional value goes up to $1.01 million, and
you get to keep all the $10,000 gain for yourself. That’s a 20% return
on your initial $50,000 investment– not bad money in a ho-hum market!
Unfortunately, the downside is that if the market goes down 1% rather
than up, you lose 20% on your investment. Oh well, what’s life without a
little excitement?
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