I really wonder what it's like being a cop in New York right now, being asked to protect the posteriors of the financiers who've been losing the cops' pension money in the Wall Street casino of the last few years.
Having lived in New York many years, I respect the thousands of good middle class people that make up the police force. I also respect the Occupy Wall Street folks.Knowing some state workers in New York, I am quite sure that the NYPD, though they're municipal workers, are worried about the same issues that public workers around the country are worried about. Those issues are contract givebacks, lower wage increases or even decreases, insurance cuts, pension cuts, and pension funding.The NYPD pension fund managers have ridden the stock market roller coaster over the last few years. Fortunately, all the data is readily available, through 2010 (I imagine the drops in the markets last quarter will make the 2011 report another downward turn). The data is not a pretty picture. And I think that if a deeper analysis than my cursory look is made, it might be quite ugly. For example, the percentage drop in value of AAA Corporate Bonds held by the fund between the 2008 and 2009 reports was 20.35% to 8.65% of funds. Now I wonder what might have been in those bonds?
In any case, a simple graph can say it far better than what I just said:
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