Is Legislative Stinginess to Blame for PERA’s Problems?

by Joshua Sharf | 12:35 pm, January 28, 2013

One of the favorite tropes of PERA apologists runs like this: PERA was fully-funded in 2001 or so, at which point the state legislature began failing to make 100% of its Annual Required Contribution (ARC).  It was then that PERA’s funded level began to drop off.  Therefore, if the state legislature had fully-funded the ARCs, [...]

Your New Finance Committee Chairman

by Joshua Sharf | 6:49 pm, November 28, 2012

With the Democrats retaking the State House of Representatives, the time has come for them to name new committees, and new committee chairmen and vice chairmen.  Most of the designees make sense, at least from an expertise point of view.  While I may disagree vehemently with Max Tyler on energy issues, his district includes NREL, [...]

COPs, Cash Flows, and Taxes

by Joshua Sharf | 10:00 am, November 28, 2012

We’ve pointed out some of the abuses of Certificates of Participation by the Denver and Jefferson County School Districts.  However, there are times when COPs are good.  One good use of COPs is as a cash management tool.  Municipal bonds are usually non-taxable, which means their yields are lower than Treasuries of an equal term, [...]

Investing in School…Bonds

by Joshua Sharf | 1:09 pm, August 16, 2012

I’ve written before about the proposed Jefferson County Schools mill levy increase, issues 3A and 3B, which will be on the ballot this fall.  The committee supporting the measure is named Citizens for JeffCo Schools (sic), and according to EdNews Colorado (confirmed by TRACER documents), it has raised a little under $50,000 this year.  Twenty [...]

How Does PERA Rate?

by Joshua Sharf | 7:18 pm, August 15, 2012

Not well.  According to its latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, PERA has an unfunded liability of $25 billion, up from $15 billion last year, mostly because of a dismal rate of return in 2011, roughly 1.9%.  Much of the criticism of public pensions has centered on their unrealistic expected rates of return, 8% in PERA’s [...]

Amortize This!

by Joshua Sharf | 4:44 pm, July 6, 2012

In Pension accounting, the amortization period is how long it would take to pay off the current unfunded liability, based on current contributions, and current employees. Typically, pensions try to keep that time at about 30 years, or a normal, long career.  That does a pretty good job of matching contributions to liabilities. The amortization [...]

Chronicles of Crony Capitalism

by Joshua Sharf | 3:08 pm, February 23, 2012

So far, the LightSquared story has mostly been written as one of the FCC favoring a politically-connected company at the expense of its competition, and that favoritism having resulted in nothing but waste.  See, for example, today’s Coffee and Markets podcast on the subject. Their related links (Documents: LightSquared shaping up as the FCC’s Solyndra [...]

First Thing, Let’s Crash All The Banks

by Joshua Sharf | 11:47 pm, October 31, 2011

The latest idea from MoveOn.org and their friends and OWS is to withdraw all their money from the “Wall Street Banks,” and to move it to smaller, community banks and credit unions on November 5th.  If such a move were to take place on the scale they’d like, it would be a deliberately created bank [...]

Obama’s Evergreen Goes Brown

by Joshua Sharf | 12:23 pm, July 28, 2011

Barack Obama and Harry Reid may not be able to produce a spending plan, but at least they have their old campaign talking points from 2008 to fall back on. With the Senate having failed to produce a budget in over 2 years, the President’s budget having succeeded in uniting Washington to a degree not [...]

Individuals Pay Corporate Taxes – Just Not Always The Consumer

by Joshua Sharf | 6:32 am, July 26, 2011

Right now, our corporate tax structure makes no sense.  It not only plays favorites, it drives many of the unfavored abroad.  We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and the code is so riddled with exceptions, subsidies, and loopholes, disguised as “incentives,” that, as Megan McArdle put it, large companies basically have [...]

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