The imposition of copyright, trade secret or patent laws to what you as a retiree contribute to public pension funds is now being compared to a proprietary 'secret sauce recipe' that McDonalds might use in its big Macs.
Summary
Representative Jim Wayne, a Democrat from Kentucky, is planning to reintroduce legislation to subject pension-investment agreements to procurement statutes that mandate public release of all government contracts -- the transparency that Wall Street disdains, refuses to acknowledge or abide by.
Even if legislators and courts in Kentucky and elsewhere press for transparency, events across the nation, especially in the state of Iowa, suggest the secrecy may continue.
In Iowa, the private equity firm KKR in October of this year warned state pension officials that if they release information about the fees that Iowa taxpayers are shelling out to Wall Street, the financial industry may respond by effectively prohibiting the state from future private-equity investments (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/11/private-equity-kingpin-kkr-threatens-iowa-pension-fund-foia-request.html&ei=zlqgVMXBMsehgwTc8IPwBw&usg=AFQjCNF25L2GdXL9O4qGJ3g1qP93Hx0_QQ&bvm=bv.82001339,d.eXY).
This is blackmail by the same venture capitalists that brought down the US financial system.
Paying fees to vulture capitalists who are bent on seeing the destruction of public-pension funds in favor of ever-increasing fees and profits to Wall Street is now the norm, all over the country.
It's appalling. Even financial capitalists like Warren Buffett are saying public pension systems shouldn't be investing retirement savings into hedge funds, private equity and other so-called "alternative investments."
Thrown to the wolves of privatized financial capitalism, public workers are beginning to wake up and see that their hard earned pensions are leading to penury instigated by the logic of a financial syndicate bent on destroying retirement, while vacuuming up public monies for private investors.
The only hope now is increased awareness and organized opposition to the decadent one percent bent on commodifying all we have worked for, and for many, all we have left.
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