California Jumps the Shark With Insane Calpers Move

From the Land of Fiscal Insanity -

California's $211 billion pension fund for public employees has been speaking with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration about providing it a $2 billion loan to help close the state government's $19 billion budget gap, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

The spokesman for the California Public Employees' Retirement System, best known as Calpers, said the talks about the loan plan, proposed by Schwarzenegger, are informal and that it is uncertain the fund can lend the money.

"We do have significant concerns about legal issues and actuarial soundness issues," the spokesman added.

 Legal issues? Gee you think?

The Real Effect
This is pure insanity. Of course the devil is in the detail so I would need to see a lot more before I could be resolute in my declaration, but I think we're pretty safe in making a few assumptions here.

• This will not fix California's budget problems.
• This will only delay the reckoning day.
• I'm guessing that the security would be the partial funds in the Calpers fund itself, therefore weakening the fund even more significantly.

 Looks like they're going to get your retirement funds one way or another.