Thread by @doctorow

The #ShieldOfBoringness - c.f. @MizDanaClaire - is a scammer's weapon. Layering scams in complexity lets villains get away with all kinds of nastiness. Some things are hard to understand because they're complex, but some things are complex so they'll be hard to understand. 1/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/meg… 2/

In finance, this is sometimes called #MEGO: "#MyEyesGlazeOver" - complex scams designed to bore their victims into submission. 3/

All of us are vulnerable to MEGO, because there's only so many hours in a day and at a certain point, your eyes just start to slide over the legal mumbo-jumbo without any of it registering. 4/

For me, the most powerful MEGO is the bottomless scamming of public pensions by private equity firms. 5/

In some distant way, I knew that there was something really terrible going on there, and that pension managers and PE looters were colluding to rip off billions, maybe trillions, from workers' pensions. 6/

But despite how awful that is, every time I encountered an article about this scam, I just bounced off it. Just the word #CALPERS was enough to send me into a coma. 7/

But finally a piece of reporting has penetrated the Shield of Boringness, perhaps because it's a rare (unprecedented?) piece of good news about this whole awful mess. 8/

Writing for @LeverNews, @matthewccook5 reports on New York #A09948, "to amend the retirement and social security law, in relation to disclosing certain investment managers and investments."

levernews.com/wall-streets-b… 9/

The things this law would require are a kind of inverse-mold of the scam itself, like flipping a doctored photo to negative to spot the tampering. 10/

If this law passes, then, for the first time, the Wall Street firms that handle New York's $269B public pension would have to disclose the cozy - and nakedly corrupt - contracting terms they arrive at with the funds' overseers. 11/

For example, it would require disclosure of when fund managers charge private jets to the pension fund:

ft.com/content/1212b2…

But gold-plated expenses are just the obvious part of the corruption. 12/

The good stuff is pure MEGO: for example, the Carlyle Group's contracts reserve the right to invest pensions' money in ways that lose money for the pension, but make money for Carlyle Group execs and their pals:

files.adviserinfo.sec.gov/IAPD/Content/C… 13/

Leaked contracts reveal that public pensions have to promise not to demand a jury trial if they get ripped off by private equity firms, and to indemnify fund managers for all misconduct unless it rises to the (very high bar of) "fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct." 14/

Some of these contracts explicitly waive the "fiduciary duty" - the obligation on fund managers to put the pensioners' interests ahead of their own. 15/

If passed, the New York bill will expose standard contracting terms that stretch out nationwide, thanks to all of the cities, towns and states that enter into comparable high-risk/high-fee arrangements with the same Wall Street firms. 16/

It will force private equity firms to disclose what they're buying with pensioners' money - for example, if they're buying group homes, laying off staff, and killing and maiming the residents, as @KKR_Co did with public pension money:

buzzfeednews.com/article/kendal… 17/

These disclosures will bring more scrutiny to the public officials who want to hand even more pension money to PE firms. 18/

Officials like @NYCComptroller Brad Lander, who received giant finance industry campaign contributions and abandoned his promise to halt public pension investments in planet-killing industries:

levernews.com/new-yorks-pens… 19/

Wall Street looters will fight this tooth-and-nail. They call these contracts "trade secrets" and compare forcing disclosure of their deals to forcing Coke to reveal its secret recipe:

pehub.com/confidentialit… 20/

It's their position that terms governing the the public billions they're entrusted with are immune to transparency laws, and they advise officials to resist public records requests regarding their deals:

wsj.com/articles/buyou… 21/

These firms killed similar legislation in Kentucky:

reuters.com/article/us-ken…

They buried a class-action suit to force the State of Kentucky to disclose the terms of its deal with the Wall Street firms that lost billions in pension money:

nakedcapitalism.com/2021/02/mayber… 22/

In Colorado, an effort to force disclosure died when public pension officials killed it:

leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/… 23/

The @ceprdc's @EileenAppelbaum succinctly described the disclosure demand: "How good are the contracts? What are the fees, expectations in terms of returns?" These are modest demands, and the outright refusal to meet them should raise alarm bells. 24/

This is especially true in light of the corrupt arrangements that have been revealed, like former NYC Comptroller Alan Hevesi's conviction of taking bribes from Carlyle Group in exchange for access to the city's pension money. 25/

DiNapoli, the new comptroller, promised an ethics overhaul - and then spectacularly failed to deliver. How bad is it? Navnoor Kang, the former NYC head of fixed incomes, went to prison in 2018 for taking bribes from brokers:

wsj.com/articles/forme… 26/

DiNapoli's Chief Investment Officer Vicki Fuller has jumped ship for PE giant Blackstone after doing business with them on the city's watch. No word on whether she'll be representing Blackstone in its negotiations with her former colleagues.

realassets.ipe.com/news/new-york-… 27/

This transparency bill cuts through MEGO. Simply enumerating the things it will force disclosure of is a powerful reminder of how bad business-as-usual is today.

nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_f… 28/

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JSquish (modified):
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