STUMP - Death and Taxes

I talk about three big inspirations to me: Thomas Day (a North Carolina cabinetmaker, an antebellum free Black man), Candace Wheeler (the “mother” of American interior design — for the masses!), and Julia Child (I hope you already know who she is). There is plenty of beauty to be found in the product of everyday work and living.

Episode Links

Thomas Day

Wikipedia article

Thomas Day (c. 1801–1861) was an American furniture craftsman and cabinetmaker in Milton, Caswell County, North Carolina.[1] Born into a free African-American family in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Day moved to Milton in 1817 and became a highly successful businessman, boasting the largest and most productive workshop in the state during the 1850s.[1]: 1, 8, 21, 23 [2][3] Day catered to upper-class white clientele and was respected among his peers for his craftsmanship and work ethic.[1]: 27 [2][4] Day came from a relatively well-off family and was privately educated.[1]: 2, 5, 7  Today, Day's pieces are highly sought after and sell for high prices; his work has been heavily studied and displayed in museums such as the North Carolina Museum of History.[5][6][3][7] Day is celebrated as a highly skilled craftsman and savvy businessman, specifically in regards to the challenges his race posed to his success in the Antebellum South.[7][2]: 35, 58 [6][8]

Smithsonian: Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color - includes videos and online gallery

Book (which I own): Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color (Richard Hampton Jenrette Series in Architecture and the Decorative Arts)

Candace Wheeler

Wikipedia page

Candace Wheeler (née Thurber; March 24, 1827 – August 5, 1923), traditionally credited as the mother of interior design, was one of America's first woman interior and textile designers. She helped open the field of interior design to women, supported craftswomen, and promoted American design reform. A committed feminist, she intentionally employed women and encouraged their education, especially in the fine and applied arts, and fostered home industries for rural women. She also did editorial work and wrote several books and many articles, encompassing fiction, semi-fiction and non-fiction, for adults and children. She used her exceptional organizational skills to co-found both the Society of Decorative Art in New York City (1877) and the New York Exchange for Women's Work (1878); and she partnered with Louis Comfort Tiffany and others in designing interiors, specializing in textiles (1879-1883), then founded her own firm, The Associated Artists (1883-1907).[1][2][3][4]

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Society of Decorative Art in New York

[edit]

Wheeler co-founded the Society of Decorative Art with Caroline E. Lamson (Mrs. David) Lane in New York in 1877.[30][31] She hired the recently widowed Elizabeth Bacon (Mrs. General George Armstrong) Custer as secretary: the two women became fast, life-long friends.[2][5][32] The Society was intended to help women support themselves through artistic handicrafts including needlework and other decorative arts. It served the thousands of women who were left indigent at the end of the Civil War. Wheeler called on prominent New York society matrons to support a shop in which the high-quality, custom-made goods could be sold to produce income; they had five hundred subscribers within three years.[30][32][23]

Leading artists were hired to teach or judge exhibits at the Society in New York, including Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LaFarge. Wheeler helped to start branches in Chicago, St. Louis, Hartford, Detroit, Troy, New York and Charleston, South Carolina.[29][33] Although she described resigning in a huff from the Society of Decorative Arts in 1879, she actually remained involved and supportive for the next several years.[34]

New York Exchange for Women's Work

In 1878 Wheeler helped launch the New York Exchange for Women's Work, where women could sell any product that they could manufacture at home, including baked goods and household linens.[30][34] To serve a broader range of women, no artistic ability was required. The Exchange opened in March 1878 with a consignment sale of thirty items at the home of Exchange co-founder Mary Atwater (Mrs. William) Choate. In April, the Exchange moved to a rented facility and by May it was successful enough to employ two part-time sales women. In its first year, it paid out nearly $14,000 in commissions. By 1891, there were at least 72 Exchanges across the United States.[32] The New York Exchange continued to operate until 2003.[35]

The Panic of 1873: Library of Congress

The Panic of 1873 triggered the first 'Great Depression' in the United States and abroad. Lasting from September 1873 until 1878/9, the economic downturn then became known as the Long Depression after the stock market crash of 1929. Currency in the nineteenth century was based on specie. Metal money circulated, and banks issued paper banknotes backed by the supply of gold and silver. In the United States, this system began breaking down in the face of financing the Civil War. President Lincoln authorized the printing of paper money, called "Greenbacks," to pay ballooning expenses. Widespread use of fiat External money continued into the Reconstruction Era, fueling the rapid expansion of railroads and wild speculation.

Banks, especially Jay Cooke and Co. raised millions of dollars through selling bonds to finance construction. Speculators 'bet' on the railroad, gambling on the fact that settlement and opportunities to make money would follow behind the completed railway. However, construction expenses ballooned and outpaced financing. Efforts to raise more funding failed. When they could no longer pay the bills, Jay Cooke and Co. and other banking houses folded. The collapse of the railway financiers sparked high bank withdrawals, the failure of brokerage firms, and railway construction halted. By September 20th, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading for the first time.

Prior podcast mentioning Wheeler: Failure, Sunk Costs, and Candace Wheeler, June 2023

Julia Child

July 2022: Training Lessons from the French Chef: Being Resourceful and Making Mistakes

Julia Child on PBS YouTube Channel - the French Chef also available at Pluto TV currently

UPDATE: Prior post mentioning Julia Child: Oct 2022 - Geeking Out: Chatting with a Fellow Actuary about Writing - I often write (for free) for actuarial publications, and I like to push what I can get away with. (I’ve been inserting sumo references lately… and I’ve got an extended sumo metaphor I would love to try out in my next piece….)

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this episode, I look at both the Democratic and Republican Party platform sections on Social Security. After all, the Trust Fund for the Old Age portion of the program is projected to run out by 2035, and the entire Baby Boom generation is Social Security eligible at this point… seems like this is something they should be addressing. The answer will surprise nobody (they don’t want to touch it at all, except perhaps to boost benefits.) The actuaries, as usual, are ignored.

Episode Links

Democratic Party Platform

Party platform page

PDF version — I know it says it’s from 2020 when you download it, but this is the document on the site, and I don’t think they’ve actually changed anything. I make no further comment about this.

Screenshots from the PDF:

Republican Party Platform

GOP about our party

PDF link

PDF screenshots:

Separate page(s):

American Academy of Actuaries on Social Security

Academy page on Social Security

9 May 2024: Committee Releases One-pager on 2024 Social Security Trustees Report

22 July 2024: An Actuarial Perspective on the 2024 Social Security Trustees Report

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

With the Democratic Party VP nominee pick, some were trying to make hay over Tim Walz having no apparent stock ownership. However, between Walz and his wife, they have four traditional pensions, and these pensions do have stock (and other) financial markets exposure. In fact, I looked at one of these pensions earlier this year: the Minnesota Teachers Fund… and Walz is the chairman of the board of that fund. Let’s look at the components of their wealth and aspects of this fund.

Episode Links

WSJ: Tim Walz’s and JD Vance’s Personal Finances Couldn’t Be More Different

Tim Walz doesn’t own a home or many investments outside of pensions and a college-savings plan, according to past financial disclosures and tax returns. Getting elected vice president as Kamala Harris’s Democratic running mate—a job that pays $235,000—would mean a more than 50% pay bump.

….

Tim and Gwen Walz together earned $166,719 before taxes in 2022, according to a tax return that year. About $116,000 of that came from Tim’s salary as governor. The governor’s salary has since increased to $149,550, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. 

A little over $51,000 of the couple’s income came from Gwen’s work as an educator, which she reported as a self-owned business. She has worked at Augsburg University since 2019, where she has taught education and served as a special assistant to the president.

The couple, who have two children, had a 529 plan, worth between $1,001 and $15,000 in 2019, according to a financial disclosure Walz filed for his final year as a House representative. They also held two life insurance policies totaling $30,002 to $100,000. 

The couple is largely relying on pensions to fund their retirement, based on his disclosures. They have four pensions with an estimated lump sum value of between $81,000 and $215,000, as of the 2019 filing.

Survey of Consumer Finances

Survey of Consumer Finances landing page

SCF Interactive Chartbook

Before-tax family income by percentile of income

Stock holdings by percentile of income

Ed Seidle and the Minnesota Teachers Pension

4 April 2024: Minnesota Teacher Pension Forensic Investigation Invites Whistleblower, Expert And Public Participation

18 Jul 2024: Toledo Blade Exposes National Effort to Undermine Investigations Into Public Pension Wrongdoing

31 July 2024: Minnesota Governor Walz Warned Of "Many Serious Risks" Facing State Pensions Under His Watch

On March 11, 2024, Jay Stoffel, the Executive Director of the Teacher Retirement Association of Minnesota—a state pension with $28 billion in assets—blasted out an email entitled “An Important Matter” to all trustees of the TRA Board and staff. This same alarming email would, within days, be sent by him to state legislators and officials, including the offices of Governor Walz, Attorney General and Legislative Auditor. (Walz, as Governor has long been chairman of the pension board and the Attorney General is also a board member.)

A “situation” posing “many serious risks to the agency and pension fund” had arisen which they “should be aware of and concerned about,” Stoffel wrote.

The seriously risky situation Stoffel was warning Governor Walz and others about was a proposed forensic investigation into potential mismanagement or wrongdoing at the pension, conducted by a nationally-recognized expert and commissioned by educators who were participants in the pension.

That’s right, the impending “grave danger” was: State workers and retirees who contributed their hard-earned savings to the pension and whose retirement security was potentially at risk—the very same individuals for whose exclusive benefit the plan (under applicable law) is supposed to be managed—were fundraising to get a “second opinion.”

Worse still, the opinion they were seeking was that of a seasoned forensic investigator of their own choosing.

7 Aug 2024: Minnesota And Kentucky Open Government Experts Applaud Ohio Magistrate's State Teacher Pension Records Decision

10 Aug 2024, NY Post: Teachers’ Minn. pension fund under Tim Walz ‘cooking the books’ by vastly underreporting fees: ‘Madoff miracle’

A Minnesota retirement system for public school teachers under Gov. Tim Walz  is “cooking the books” by vastly underreporting annual fees paid to Wall Street investment managers — and posting near-impossible gains tantamount to a “Madoff miracle,” a top pension investigator said.

The state-run Teachers Retirement Association, or TRA, has publicly disclosed less than 10% of an estimated $2.9 billion spent on fees in the past 10 years, said Edward Siedle, a former US Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer and independent pension investigator. 

The TRA also posted gains claiming it beat its own custom benchmark over periods of one, five, 10, 20 and 30 years by exactly 0.2%, which Siedle called “virtually impossible.”

Teacher testimony linked from NY Post piece: dated 7 Feb 2024

My name is Katie Dickerson and I am 55 years old and have been teaching for 31 years. 28 teaching in Hopkins and 3 in NH. As I’am getting closer to retirement I realize the state never made improvements to our retirement system. Not only do we have a high contribution rate to TRA, but we don't have a rule and are forced to work many more years unless we are willing to be hit with huge penalties. This is not how I ever imagined educators would be treated.

[More at link]

Toledo Blade Editorial: 18 July 2024

STRS Minnesota meddling

A cursory look at the Minnesota Teachers Retirement Association leads to the conclusion they’re either a world class pension or they’re cooking the books. Minnesota reported investment fees on the $26.7 billion teacher pension fund of $24.1 million. The teachers fund has a $6.6 billion private equity portfolio that would be expected to pay at least $132 million a year to fund managers. Moreover, a comprehensive study of 54 public pensions from 2008 to 2023 conducted by investment expert Richard Ennis shows fees average 1 percent of assets under management. By that metric Minnesota Teachers Retirement Association would be expected to pay over a quarter billion dollars a year to fund managers.

The national response from public pension advocacy agencies reflects the crisis these incredibly noteworthy numbers create. Either Minnesota has a special deal with Wall Street paying fees 90 percent under the going rate or an investment board made up of the governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and auditor, has massively massaged the truth.

A long term look at Minnesota’s pension math is just as perplexing. The teachers retirement fund purports to beat a composite index they created by 0.2 percent measured over 1, 5, 10, 20, and 30 years. The odds of that level of consistency over each measure of time are infinitesimal.

Earlier STUMP Podcast

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In light of the ongoing anger of Ohio STRS participants over the removal of COLAs (cost-of-living adjustments) in 2017, and the plan’s fairly typical asset allocation for a public plan (though better-than-peers results), I look at two recent research papers calling into question the use of alternative assets in public pensions. I have a different point to make: that the assets are not really what is at issue. The pension promises are.

Episode Links

Ohio STRS: Public meeting notice for July 19, 2024

* Last item: Investment Committee Meeting Presentation

Slide exhibits I referenced:

Boston College Paper: How Do Public Pension Plan Returns Compare to Simple Index Investing?

June 2024, by Jean-Pierre Aubry and Yimeng Yin

Key Findings:

Public pension plans are increasingly relying on alternative investments and active management.

But how does plan performance compare to a simple 60/40 index over various periods from 2000-2023?

Over the full period, plan returns are virtually identical to the simple index strategy, but plans have done much worse since the Global Financial Crisis.

If the current approach doesn’t yield higher long-term returns, a strong argument can be made for sticking with a simple, transparent strategy.

Here are the key graphs from the report:

Richard Ennis Paper

Girard Miller: How ‘Alternative Investments’ Are Dragging Down Pension Performance

Commenting on the Ennis paper, in case you can’t download from SSRN.

SSRN Link: How Hidden Costs Undermine Public Pensions in the US

Abstract

Public pension plans in the US incur exorbitant asset management costs. Most spend a lot and get nothing for it. High cost has hindered efforts to realize their actuarial return requirement. It has resulted in poor performance pretty much across the board. And yet, very few plans provide a full accounting of the costs they incur. Some still fail to net all their investment expenses from the returns they report. High cost is the Achilles heel of the public pension system in the US. It’s time to bring costs down, way down.

Alternative Asset Allocation by Public Pensions … and Ohio STRS

The orange line shows the Ohio STRS allocation. Yes, it’s pretty much in line with the median allocation for the database.

Prior Ohio STRS Posts

6 May 2024: Public Pension Governance Drama in Ohio

10 May 2024: Ohio Pension Drama Continues: Investigation Called on "Hostile Takeover"

16 May 2024: Ohio State Teachers Pension Drama Continues! Board Turmoil!

17 May 2024: More Ohio STRS Commentary: Alternative Assets in Pensions, Anonymous Memos, and Teachers Pensions in General [corrected/updated on May 22]

1 June 2024: Corrections and Clarifications on Ohio STRS: Audits and Investments

27 June 2024: Ohio STRS Drama Continues: No Bonuses and Board Member Resigns

15 July 2024: Ohio STRS Update for 15 July 2024: More Legislative Action, Advisor Resignation(s), Research on Public Pension Asset Returns

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I love the classics. Bobby Bonilla Day has it all: deferred annuities, too-high discount rates for a present value, Bernie Madoff, trying to avoid a “tax”, credit risk… let’s look in on my favorite sports deal while it’s still paying out, this July 1.

Episode Links

Coverage of Bobby Bonilla Day

Fox Sports: What is Bobby Bonilla Day? Explaining the New York Mets' ongoing contract saga

Major League Baseball might be intertwined with July 4, but another early-July holiday holds special significance for a significant portion of baseball fans.

That day is July 1, also known as "Bobby Bonilla Day." It's the day when the New York Mets pay their annual deferred fee to former player Bobby Bonilla — who last played an MLB game in October 2001.

Bonilla was owed $5.9 million when the Mets cut the aging player in 1999 and bought out the rest of his contract. Instead of paying him the sum up front, however, then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon cut a deal with Bonilla's camp. The Mets would pay Bonilla in installments, with annual interest, every year from 2011-2035. Those installments will eventually total nearly $30 million, much more than what Bonilla was owed, according to ESPN.

But there were several upsides for the Mets to pursue this strategy as well — at least, that's the way it looked at the time. The Mets used the $5.9 million to create an annuity with a securities investor they were heavily in business with at the time that would pay them back in annual dividends. By doing so, they also freed up that money from their payroll for MLB bylaws purposes, meaning that they could use it to sign other players without adding to the total roster payroll that the league could potentially levy taxes against. 

The investor with whom they created the account was known for paying back those dividends with high interest, so the Mets themselves thought they would reap the profits of millions of dollars over the course of the deal even when subtracting all the money they would pay Bonilla.

Just one problem — that investor's name was Bernie Madoff, and in 2009, Madoff was convicted of running the largest Ponzi scheme fraud in recorded history and sentenced to 150 years in prison. In other words, the profits that the Mets were counting on in their Bonilla strategy likely never came. The fallout of Madoff's crimes financially devastated the Mets, whose dealings with the corrupt money manager went far beyond their Bonilla agreement. The Mets struggled financially for the rest of Wilpon's tenure as owner until the team was sold to current owner Steve Cohen in late 2020.

(2022) ESPN: What is Bobby Bonilla Day? Explaining why the former Met gets paid $1.19M every July 1

How rare is this arrangement?

Bonilla last played for the Mets in 1999 and last played in the majors for the Cardinals in 2001, but he will be paid through 2035 (when he'll be 72).

Here are some other notable deferred-money contracts, courtesy of ESPN Stats & Information's Ryan Milowicki:

• Bobby Bonilla (again): A second deferred-contract plan with the Mets and Orioles pays him $500,000 a year for 25 years. Those payments began in 2004.

• Bret Saberhagen: Will receive $250,000 a year from the Mets for 25 years (payments also began in 2004; this was the inspiration for Bonilla's deal).

• Max Scherzer: Will receive $105 million total from the Nationals that will be paid out through 2028.

• Manny Ramírez: Will collect $24.2 million total from the Red Sox through 2026.

• Ken Griffey Jr.: Will receive $3.59 million from the Reds every year through 2024 as the deferral from his nine-year, $116 million deal signed in 2000.

• Todd Helton: Will get $1.3 million from the Rockies every year through 2023 as the result of $13 million deferred when he signed a two-year extension in 2010.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bonilla

Bonilla signed with the New York Mets during the 1991-92 offseason, becoming the highest-paid player in the league at the time, earning more than $6 million per year. However he struggled to live up to expectations with the Mets (which made the contract the subject of much criticism)[5] and throughout the rest of his career. He played with the Baltimore Orioles from 1995-1996, reaching the American League Championship Series with the team in 1996. He earned two additional All-Star appearances and helped the Florida Marlins win the 1997 World Series.[4] After being traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers part way through the 1998 season, he signed for a second time with the New York Mets in 1999. When the Mets wanted to release him at the end of the year, he negotiated a settlement whereby the Mets would pay him $1.19 million every year from 2011 through 2035 on July 1, a date that has become known in Mets fandom as "Bobby Bonilla Day". He is also paid $500,000 by the Orioles every year from 2004 to 2028 due to them also having a deferred contract with him.[6] After two more lackluster seasons, one each with the Atlanta Braves and St. Louis Cardinals, he retired at the end of the 2001 season. Through his 16 years in professional baseball, Bonilla accumulated a .279 batting average, with a .358 on-base percentage and a .472 slugging percentage.

Mets and Bernie Madoff

Curbed, April 2021: One More Thing Bernie Madoff Helped Ruin: The Mets

When you see Bobby Bonilla’s name trending on Twitter on a day like this, as a Mets fan, do you laugh, or do you cry?

I always laugh because it’s, like, my professional requirement at this point. But you know, it starts with a cry, right? There are certain phrases in the Mets vernacular that when you see them trending your heart just sinks and you’re like, Oh, what now? So, you know, if that’s a long way of asking, did I find out that Bernie Madoff had died because of Bobby Bonilla trending — Yes, I did.

ESPN, April 2021: Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme affected New York Mets, dies at 82

NEW YORK -- Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme led to the former New York Mets owners being embroiled in a $1 billion lawsuit, has died in prison at age 82.

Madoff burned thousands of investors, outfoxed regulators and received a 150-year prison term. He died of natural causes at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.

Among his victims were director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. But he had ties to sports figures as well. Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax was a client. And former Mets owners Fred Wilpon, Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz were major investors. Their involvement changed the trajectory of the franchise.

Wilpon and Katz had over 500 accounts with Madoff and were sued for $1 billion by the trustee for the victims who claimed they knew, or should have known, about the fraudulent returns from Madoff's scheme, according to The New York Times.

Mets and Bond Ratings

Feb 2010, Reuters: New York Mets stadium debt falls deeper into junk

June 2020, Forbes: New York Mets’ Citi Field Debt Is Downgraded To Below Investment Grade

It may have just gotten a little tougher for Fred Wilpon to hang on to the New York Mets.

This afternoon, credit rating agency S&P Global Ratings announced it was lowering its ratings to BB+, from BBB, on the New York City Industrial Development Agency’s series 2006 $547.4 million payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) bonds, $58.4 million installment purchase bonds, $7.1 million lease revenue bonds, and series 2009 $82.28 million PILOT bonds issued for Queens Ballpark Co. LLC (Citi Field), the baseball team’s ballpark. S&P said it was also assigning a recovery rating of 1, reflecting an expectation for very high (90-100%; rounded estimate: 95%) recovery in the event of a default.

The team made a PILOT bond payment of $44 million in 2019. The BB+ rating is the first step toward being rated below investment grade. Specifically, an insurer rated BBB has good financial security characteristics but is more likely to be affected by adverse business conditions than are higher-rated insurers while an insurer rated BB or lower is regarded as having vulnerable characteristics that may outweigh its strengths.

The Mets—owned by Sterling Equities, which is controlled by Jeff Wilpon, his son Jeff, and Saul Katz—have been on the block for a while. A deal with Steve Cohen broke down in February. Most recently, former MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez were trying to raise money to buy the team, which Forbes valued at $2.4 billion in early April. In early May, I wrote that the couple had ended their attempt to buy the team because they couldn’t get sufficient funds. But it was reported five days ago that Rodriguez and Lopez are taking another shot.

Oct 2023, Fitch Ratings: Fitch Affirms Queens Ballpark Company LLC (Citi Field, NY Mets) at 'BBB'; Outlook Stable

Fitch Ratings - New York - 04 Oct 2023: Fitch Ratings has affirmed the 'BBB' rating for the New York City Industrial Development Agency's (NYCIDA) PILOT $551.5 million revenue bonds, series 2021; $6.0 million lease revenue bonds, series 2006; and $49.2 million instalment purchase revenue bonds, series 2006, all issued on behalf of Queens Ballpark Company, LLC (QBC). The Rating Outlook is Stable.

RATING RATIONALE

The rating reflects Major League Baseball's (MLB) solid league economics and the historical franchise strength of the New York Mets which play at the Citi Field stadium in Queens, New York City. The QBC retained rights revenue stream provides strong coverage of operating costs and stadium PILOT and lease obligations, although ticket and suite revenues have shown historical variations in attendance levels based on team performance. Rating case coverage of all debt averages 3.7x from 2023-2045, while net revenue coverage of PILOT payments averages 3.3x over the same period.

Older STUMP Posts/Links

Dec 2023: Let's Make a Deal! Ohtani Restructures His Pay

Google spreadsheet with the present value calculation

2023: Happy Bobby Bonilla('s Agent) Day 2023!

2022: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day for 2022!

2021: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! In Praise of Valuable Annuities

2020: Classic STUMP: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! And Independence Day! Make Mine a Valuable Annuity!

2018: Mornings with Meep: Happy Bobby Bonilla (and Bruce Sutter) Day!  

2016: Happy Bobby Bonilla Day! and more Americana  

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Whatever you call it: Campbell’s Law (no relation), Goodhart’s Law, or the cobra effect — when you use measures that are merely cheap stand-ins for a much more difficult result you want to get at, people will start gaming that measure. And you will often get a result you really don’t like.

Episode Links

Wells Fargo News

Bloomberg, Matt Levine: Wells Fargo Mouse Jigglers

In 2016, Wells Fargo & Co. got in trouble for opening fake accounts. What happened was that Wells Fargo’s senior management had decided that it wanted its branch employees to cross-sell products, to push each checking customer to open up a savings account and a credit card and sign up for online banking and maybe get a mortgage, because this would deepen the bank’s relationship with the customer and ultimately lead to more revenue. But instead of hiring and training employees who would holistically assess each customer’s needs and suggest suitable products, Wells Fargo had “strict quotas regulating the number of daily ‘solutions’ that its bankers must reach,” and its managers would “constantly hound, berate, demean and threaten employees to meet these unreachable quotas.”

….

Ahahaha come on. You want a lot of mouse movement, you get a lot of mouse movement, but in a bad way. Imagine deciding how to measure and manage the productivity and value added of your wealth and investment management employees while they are working from home. What might you measure?

….

Which of those do you think is the best proxy for, like, contributions to Wells Fargo’s return on equity? Which is the simplest to measure? Which is the simplest to game?

CNN Business: Wells Fargo fired a dozen people accused of faking keyboard strokes

See here: Wells Fargo this week disclosed that it had fired more than a dozen employees for “simulation of keyboard activity,” Bloomberg reported, citing filings to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. CNN confirmed that multiple people were let go after a review of allegations that they created an “impression of active work.”

In other words, they were faking work, perhaps with the kind of mouse jiggler that you can buy online for $20.

Those devices — which keep your screen active and move your cursor in convincingly random ways — took off during the early days of the pandemic. With employees no longer huddled together under fluorescent lighting, eating sad desk salads, bosses suddenly had to wonder whether their teams were actually working or slacking off.

Even though most workers said they were more productive from home, many executives  adopted “bossware” to monitor their staff’s laptops. (And to be fair, yes — sometimes we did step away, selfishly tending to our own personal business, like walking the dog or staring out the window while contemplating our mortality. We hope you can forgive us.)

….

But firing people over mouse movers may not be the best way to foster a culture of trust and inclusion.

“Managers often assume the worst when they see someone’s away, and so they’re looking for any type of data to show that that’s true,” Herd says. “So, team members are going to innovate around that.”

Mashable: Wells Fargo reportedly fired people for alleged 'simulation of keyboard activity'

There are many ways to fake being online while working, including the use of gadgets that imitate computer activity, or "mouse jigglers." Mouse jigglers are pretty easy to get; they're selling on Amazon for under £10 right now. They're mechanical devices that physically move your mouse around to prevent your computer from going into sleep mode. TikTokkers have been recommending these devices for years, while folks on Reddit have shared horror stories of being caught by their managers using them.

It's unclear how the company actually figured out staff were allegedly undertaking "simulation of keyboard activity" at all. An increasing number of companies are surveilling employees since the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the rise of working from home. Some companies have installed keylogger software on their computers to recorded characters typed, and biometric monitoring is on the rise, despite privacy concerns and employee backlash.

A 2021 study by Express VPN found 78 percent of employers engage in remote work surveillance, with 73 percent of employers using email, calls, messages, or videos to inform performance reviews — yes, your boss can read your Gmail drafts (and that's not all) — and 46 percent using it monitor the potential formation of workers' unions.

But as Jack Morse writes for Mashable, "While your boss monitoring your every move is definitely creepy, it's perfectly legal."

Reddit: r/news Wells Fargo fired a dozen people accused of faking keyboard strokes

The Various “Laws”

Wikipedia: Goodhart’s Law

Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".[1] It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who is credited with expressing the core idea of the adage in a 1975 article on monetary policy in the United Kingdom:[2]

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.[3]

Campbell’s Law

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.[1]

….

In 1976, Campbell wrote: "Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)"[1]

Campbell's Law: Something Every Educator Should Know

The cobra effect

The term cobra effect was coined by economist Horst Siebert based on an anecdotal occurrence in India during British rule.[2][3] The British government, concerned about the number of venomous cobras in Delhi, offered a bounty for every dead cobra. Initially, this was a successful strategy; large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped. When cobra breeders set their snakes free, the wild cobra population further increased.[4] This story is often cited as an example of Goodhart's law or Campbell's law.[5]

Check out the talk page:

This was told by my dad, who happened to work in the central planification ministry during early socialist Czechoslovakia (until he managed to escape).

Czechoslovakian crystal glass is famous worldwide, and thus chandeliers were produced, for export to get foreign currency. Problem is, there is a limited market for luxury chandeliers, which are purchased by the unit, some of them bespoke, all of them handmade, certainly not from one single design. Thus, worker productivity (very important in socialist countries, for any kind of bonus) cannot be measured by the unit, so let's measure the total weight produced... As a result, Czech crystal chandeliers grew to be so heavy, that clients were having engineering issues when trying to install those. YamaPlos talk 23:50, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Winner’s Curse

The winner's curse is a phenomenon that may occur in common value auctions, where all bidders have the same (ex post) value for an item but receive different private (ex ante) signals about this value and wherein the winner is the bidder with the most optimistic evaluation of the asset and therefore will tend to overestimate and overpay. Accordingly, the winner will be "cursed" in one of two ways: either the winning bid will exceed the value of the auctioned asset making the winner worse off in absolute terms, or the value of the asset will be less than the bidder anticipated, so the bidder may garner a net gain but will be worse off than anticipated.[1][2]

Fake Philosophy Journals

Retraction Watch: How a widely used ranking system ended up with three fake journals in its top 10 philosophy list

We checked the Scopus philosophy list and discovered three journals published by Addleton Academic Publishers – which we had never heard of – are in the top 10 of the 2023 CiteScore ranking: Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations (3rd on the list of 806 philosophy journals indexed by Scopus in 2023), Review of Contemporary Philosophy (5/806), and Analysis and Metaphysics (6/806). All three also are in the top 100 of the 2023 SJR ranking. 

….

How was it possible to get into the Scopus top 10 in philosophy? The trick is simple: The Addleton journals extensively cross-cite each other. For example, of 541 citations to Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations used to calculate the 2023 CiteScore, 208 come from journals published by Addleton. Additional citations come mostly from Frontiers and MDPI journals.

Predatory publishing in Scopus: Evidence on cross-country differences

Abstract:

Predatory publishing represents a major challenge to scholarly communication. This paper maps the infiltration of journals suspected of predatory practices into the citation database Scopus and examines cross-country differences in the propensity of scholars to publish in such journals. Using the names of “potential, possible, or probable” predatory journals and publishers on Beall’s lists, we derived the ISSNs of 3,293 journals from Ulrichsweb and searched Scopus with them. A total of 324 of journals that appear in both Beall’s lists and Scopus, with 164,000 articles published during 2015–2017 were identified. Analysis of data for 172 countries in four fields of research indicates that there is a remarkable heterogeneity. In the most affected countries, including Kazakhstan and Indonesia, around 17% of articles were published in the suspected predatory journals, while some other countries have no articles in this category whatsoever. Countries with large research sectors at the medium level of economic development, especially in Asia and North Africa, tend to be most susceptible to predatory publishing. Policy makers and stakeholders in these and other developing countries need to pay more attention to the quality of research evaluation.

Quantitative Science Studies (2022) 3 (3): 859–887.

https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00213

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Jumping off from a recent story on embezzlement from a Florida Catholic church, I look at past stories of massive frauds, as well as some other failures and successes. I talk about: Rita Crundwell in Dixon, Illinois. Rizzo and Bell, California. The London Whale. And a happy save for TIAA before the financial crisis in 2008.

Episode Links

The Pillar: Massive parish theft calls for more internal control, expert says

The Pillar also has been great in covering the Vatican financial problems. A few sample articles: [all articles are free — some podcasts and other items are for paid subscribers only]

November 2022:

February 2022:

Nov 2023:

Rita Crundwell and Dixon, Illinois

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Crundwell

Rita A. Crundwell (née Humphrey; born January 10, 1953) is the former Comptroller and Treasurer of Dixon, Illinois, from 1983 to 2012, and the admitted operator of what is believed to be the largest municipal fraud in U.S. history. She was fired in April 2012 after the discovery that she had embezzled $53.7 million from the city of Dixon for over 22 years to support her championship American Quarter Horse breeding operation, as well as a lavish lifestyle away from work.[1][2][3] Crundwell pleaded guilty to her crimes and was sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison.[4]

Crundwell used the stolen money to turn her Quarter Horse breeding operation, RC Quarter Horses, into one of the best-known in the country; her horses won 52 world championships and she was named the leading owner by the American Quarter Horse Association for eight consecutive years prior to her arrest.[5][6] She spent less than 8+1⁄2 years (43% of her sentence) in prison before being released in mid-2021 to serve the remainder of her sentence in home confinement at her brother's 80 acres (32 ha) farm in Dixon.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixon,_Illinois

Dixon is a city and the county seat of Lee County, Illinois, United States.[2] The population was 15,274 as of the 2020 census. The city is named after founder John Dixon, who operated a rope ferry service across the Rock River, which runs through the city.[3] The Illinois General Assembly designated Dixon as "Petunia Capital of Illinois" in 1999 and "The Catfish Capital of Illinois" in 2009.

….

In April 2012, Dixon Municipal Comptroller Rita Crundwell was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for embezzlement. She used the embezzled funds to pay for her lavish lifestyle and what became one of the nation's best-known quarter horse-breeding programs, among other things. Crundwell's crimes, thought to be the most substantial municipal theft in U.S. history,[8][9] impacted Dixon's finances severely. Federal prosecutors estimated the amount embezzled at $53 million since 1990.[10] The city sued the auditors who had failed to detect the embezzlement and the bank at which Crundwell maintained a secret account, and received $40 million in settlements.[11] In February 2013, Crundwell was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison.[9][12]

Politico: She Stole $54 Million From Her Town. Then Something Unexpected Happened.

This is a very good, in-depth article from 2023. I used this excerpt:

Another intangible change: Dixon voters didn’t just throw out their council but their form of government itself, separating the legislative role of the City Council from the executive role of the city manager (whom the council appoints). Langloss, the current city manager, said the job functions like a that of a CEO, with a code of ethics not to get involved in politics. “The council really becomes a board of directors and the staff are in charge of running the operation day to day.”

More checks and balances, yes, but still no matter the form of government, someone has to hold power, and there’s no inherent reason an appointed city manager would be immune from abusing it. (The former city manager of Bell, California, was convicted of corruption, along with six other city officials, in 2014.) Meanwhile, the city has also instituted new financial controls, separating out functions once all concentrated in the person of Rita Crundwell. And one study suggests that city manager-run governments are indeed less susceptible to corruption; for one thing, an appointed city manager does not depend on campaign contributions the way an elected mayor does. Then again, though, neither did Crundwell.

What I did not use: the mayor died within a year, from cancer, and the whistleblower who found the issues during Crundwell’s vacation, Kathe Swanson, retired soon after all this.

All this is very stressful on those exposing the wrong-doing. It’s better if the wrong-doing never happens in the first place. (This is for another time)

Bell, California

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal

London Whale

The Modeling Platform: April 2016

How to Keep Your Spreadsheets Out of the Headlines: A Summary

In spring 2012, a prominent trader at JPMorgan was nicknamed the “London Whale” due to the size of the trading positions he took in credit default swaps. The risk management oversight for this trading desk relied on value-at-risk (VaR) limits calculated in a spreadsheet model.

Within this spreadsheet, there was a key error. The formula in calculating the VaR limits inadvertently divided by the SUM of two numbers as opposed to their AVERAGE.1 As a result, the volatility measure being used in calculating VaR was off by a factor of two. That error led to a significant understatement of the trading risk.

This was unlikely to be the only error in the spreadsheet, though. A report released in 2013 showed there was a series of spreadsheets being used for the risk management controls on these trades that involved several manual processes. Information was copied and pasted manually from one spreadsheet to another.

The result of these errors: $6 billion in trading losses over a two-month period.

To be sure, the risk management and governance problems found in this report went well beyond spreadsheets. However, lax spreadsheet practice did contribute to the loss.

Baseline Scenario, Jame Kwak, 2013: The Importance of Excel:

The issue is described in the appendix to JPMorgan’s internal investigative task force’s report. To summarize: JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office needed a new value-at-risk (VaR) model for the synthetic credit portfolio (the one that blew up) and assigned a quantitative whiz (“a London-based quantitative expert, mathematician and model developer” who previously worked at a company that built analytical models) to create it. The new model “operated through a series of Excel spreadsheets, which had to be completed manually, by a process of copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another.” The internal Model Review Group identified this problem as well as a few others, but approved the model, while saying that it should be automated and another significant flaw should be fixed.** After the London Whale trade blew up, the Model Review Group discovered that the model had not been automated and found several other errors.

….

This is why the JPMorgan VaR model is the rule, not the exception: manual data entry, manual copy-and-paste, and formula errors. This is another important reason why you should pause whenever you hear that banks’ quantitative experts are smarter than Einstein, or that sophisticated risk management technology can protect banks from blowing up. At the end of the day, it’s all software. While all software breaks occasionally, Excel spreadsheets break all the time. But they don’t tell you when they break: they just give you the wrong number.

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This one is dark, so you’ve been warned. In my post last week on drug overdoses, I noted the great increase in drug overdose deaths during the pandemic, and I address the issue of drug addiction and its relationship with physical pain. Sometimes, there are no good choices.

Episode Links (Updated)

Matt Bivens, M.D. piece:

Drug Overdose Death Stats

Dashboard of U.S. Population Mortality — Opioid Deaths

SOA Research page: U.S. Population Mortality Observations – Updated with 2021 Experience

Historical Items

Laudanum: is a tincture of opium containing approximately 10% powdered opium by weight (the equivalent of 1% morphine).[1] Laudanum is prepared by dissolving extracts from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) in alcohol (ethanol).

Innumerable Victorian women were prescribed the drug for relief of menstrual cramps and vague aches. Nurses also spoon-fed laudanum to infants. The Romantic and Victorian eras were marked by the widespread use of laudanum in Europe and the United States. Mary Todd Lincoln, for example, the wife of the US president Abraham Lincoln, was a laudanum addict, as was the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was famously interrupted in the middle of an opium-induced writing session of Kubla Khan by "a person on business from Porlock".[14] Initially a working class drug, laudanum was cheaper than a bottle of gin or wine, because it was treated as a medication for legal purposes and not taxed as an alcoholic beverage.

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Ohio State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) is having some drama, as a consulting firm has resigned due to power struggles between competing interests. The plan participants, whether current teachers or retirees, are angry about STRS investment staff getting bonuses while they do not get cost-of-living adjustments for retirement benefits. All of this while in an economic environment of high inflation… they aren’t the first and will not be the last.

Episode Links

Ohio STRS media coverage

1 May 2024, Pensions & Investment: Ohio State Teachers loses Aon as consultant amid board turmoil

Ohio State Teachers’ Retirement System, Columbus, has lost Aon as a governance consultant after the firm resigned from the assignment, according to people familiar with the matter.

The $94 billion pension fund’s board recently tilted to a majority of self-proclaimed reformers who want to gut investment staff and move the pension fund to all index funds, citing a desire to restore a permanent 3% cost-of-living adjustment.

At the April 18 board meeting, Trustee Wade Steen reclaimed his seat after the 10th District Court of Appeals earlier that day ruled that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine did not have the authority in May 2023 to remove Steen as his appointed investment expert on the STRS board before the completion of his four-year term.

5 May 2024, Toledo Blade: Editorial: STRS got fired

The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio needs a new fiduciary governance adviser. The $92 billion retirement fund for 500,000 Ohio teachers was effectively fired by Aon Fiduciary Services over the chaos on the STRS board.

When the 10th District Court of Appeals ruled that Gov. Mike DeWine acted outside his constitutional authority in firing his appointed investment expert Wade Steen, there suddenly was a 6-5 board majority in support of reforms first advocated by Mr. Steen.

STRS Board Chairman Dale Price, a Toledo Public School teacher, abruptly ended the April 18 meeting without the procedural norms of a motion to adjourn and a vote that supports the motion. The reform majority on the STRS Board was left to sputter in outrage as Mr. Price raced out of STRS headquarters.

April 2024: Ousted STRS member makes dramatic return to board, armed with court ruling

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – The governor overstepped his authority when he removed a member of the state teacher pension board, a court has ruled. 

Ohio’s 10th District Court of Appeals sided with ousted State Teachers Retirement System investment expert Wade Steen on Thursday, ruling that Gov. Mike DeWine did not have the constitutional authority to remove Steen from his position on the pension board. The decision cements a magistrate’s recommendation that Steen be reinstated to the board to complete his term.

….

Steen’s presence on the board gave a faction of reformers a majority, allowing them to make desired changes to the state’s teacher retirement fund. But the board chairman called a sudden adjournment of the meeting and left, effectively ending it.

December 2023: Math doesn’t add up – Retired teachers denied 3% COLA increases while some STRS staff get huge bonuses

The images of smiling retired teachers on the screen painted a different picture than the reality faced by Kathy Foster, who retired after teaching 32 years in Findlay.

Despite promises from the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, Foster said she has received only one 3% raise since retiring 10 years ago.

“I got one cost of living wage,” said Foster, who lives in Wayne.

Meanwhile, the STRS investment staff has been handsomely rewarded for their work, she said.

“They have gotten millions of dollars in bonuses,” Foster said. “They lost billions of dollars last year, and they are still getting bonuses.”

“We haven’t gotten the money we were promised. I just want the 3% that I was promised,” she said.

STRS is not being good fiduciaries, said Foster, who in retirement has taken on a part-time job at the Wayne Public Library to make ends meet. “I’m not going to be able to work forever,” she said.

“They keep asking the members and the employers for even more,” while the system is spending money on the slick public relations blitz showing teachers seemingly thrilled with their retirement benefits, Foster said, shaking her head.

Public Plans Database: Ohio Teachers

All graphs sourced from the Public Plans Database

STRS 2022 Actuarial Valuation Report

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Back in December, somebody asked me how many people alive now would be alive in 75 years. The answer: about 15% (for the U.S.). This is not a trivial question — it relates to questions of political decision-making for the long-term, such as public finance. In this episode, I look at the survivorship for 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, and 75 years, and think through what this means.

Graphs and spreadsheet below.

Episode Links, Graphs, and More

Data and Assumptions

Population Estimate

Released 11 April 2024: 2023 Population Estimates by Age and Sex

Social Security Mortality Cohort Projections

2023 Social Security Trustees Report Life Tables, Cohort by Age and Sex, based on the Alternative 2 mortality probabilities used in the 2023 Trustees Report.

Survivorship Projections

First, here are the graphs of the original population in 2023, and how many of them survive to 2033 (10 years), 2048 (25 years), 2073 (50 years), and 2098 (75 years).

This is ignoring any new immigrants or births, just focusing on the current U.S. population and projecting into the future, looking at survivorship.

You can see all the weird peaks, and especially, the steep drops in old age.

But let me simplify the survivorship understanding with this table:

While 15% of the overall population of 2023 makes it to 2098, you can see that is primarily those currently age 20 and younger.

Let’s make it even more apparent:

Again, this is just projecting the current population. In 75 years, of the current population still around, 93% will be those currently 20 and younger, 7% will be 21-40 years old now, and those of us over 40 will have been long gone.

Spreadsheet

Related Posts

May 2015: Illinois Pensions: How Did We Get Here? The 1970 Constitution  

This is the relevant section of the 1970 Illinois State Constitution:

SECTION 5. PENSION AND RETIREMENT RIGHTS

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

That section has not been amended since 1970.

STUMP - Meep on public finance, pensions, mortality and more is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.