Larry Pollack

Screaming pension actuary

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@EquableInst Except these funded percentages under any meaningful and understood definition of the term are all overstated significantly because the liabilities are understated because the discounting (using expected asset return) violates basic principles of finance

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@anthonyrandazzo Hey Anthony. As long as real (economic) liabilities are obscured by expected-return discounting, even if more conservative, mismanagement is https://t.co/lHFYPVjX0j Biggs’s book notes, mismeasurement leads to mismanagement. Any plans to start looking at things on that basis?

[John Ralfe @JohnRalfe1]

Private equity can defy the gloom narrative - https://t.co/oY2KlYqc68 via @FT what else would we expect the "co-head of @KKR_Co private equity" to say? I wonder @FT charged KKR for this advert?

[Andrew G. Biggs @biggsag]

How do you cut over-65 poverty by over one million seniors? Count their incomes, that's how. (Link in reply.)

[John Ralfe @JohnRalfe1]

My latest @ftmoney piece "Are equities ‘always’ better in the long term?"
"Why won't firms pushing the “equities always outperform in the long run” mantra put their money where their mouth is, & offer a cheap guaranteed equity product?" https://t.co/9l5nYduPVV via @ft

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

Public Pensions: Actuarial "expected-return" discounting violates intergenerational equity, by @pollacklarry22 https://t.co/8KXhVtaHWn

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@ChrisOldman4 @biggsag It’s not “scaling” bc of the breakpts in the bft formula. Marginal bfts for each dollar in taxes gets low. Q is how much does Musk get for his addl taxes; and is everyone good with Musk getting SS of say $1m/yr (don’t know the number but it’s big) even w low marginal addl bfts?

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@RaviBhalla Makes sense — thanks for the response

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@RaviBhalla @NewJerseyDEP @shawnlatur Sorry one more question: does it take 24 hours because it needs to sit in a Petri dish for that long to make sure nothing grows - or because the wheels of state government grind slowly.

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@RaviBhalla @NewJerseyDEP @shawnlatur Thanks for the post -- one question: if the main was repaired yesterday, as reported, why were the water samples just taken today? Why not last night?

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

Airline Pilots' New Defined Benefit (DB) Pension Plans, by @pollacklarry22 https://t.co/n4bAG2DHYn

[Clifford Asness @CliffordAsness]

So here’s the plan. We have massive unprecedented deficits. So we’re going to borrow or print a lot more money to buy imaginary assets because those imaginary assets have gone up a ton and thus will always go up a ton. Got it? Utopia follows.

[Andrew G. Biggs @biggsag]

I think every Member of Congress should take the @Actuary_Dot_Org Social Security challenge. It shows there are no easy answers.

A quick thread. /1

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@biggsag Some advisors specialize in maxing tax defrl with ret plans. New DB plans are almost always that. CB acct earnings are based on fund return, but can't go below sum of conts in total. Usually see this with prof svc firms, but also works for pilots. Diff from IBM. Interesting tho.

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@biggsag Delta, United also. Tax play for highly paid union pilots. CB money is employer(I understand). Emplyee money all 401(k). CB is for when max out 401(k) $70k 415 limit emplyer+emplyee, not deferral limit of $23.5k. Not broadbased like IBM. Law firms, doc offices do this a lot.

[Andrew G. Biggs @biggsag]

Elon is a smart guy. But Social Security's funding shortfall isn't an IQ problem.

We're paying more and more benefits to seniors who already have higher and higher incomes - the highest in history and the 2nd highest in the world (after Luxembourg, if you care).

And were doing that with low fertility, meaning fewer workers paying taxes to support those rising benefits.

Hopefully Elon will figure that out and make an issue of it. But there's no reason everybody else can't figure it out as well.
https://t.co/uw85UsQMNl

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

@RetirementQuant @WSJ And it’s understated significantly because the liabilities are probably 25-30% higher (“expected return” discount rate)

[Dominic Pino @DominicJPino]

It's weird how stuff constantly labeled "populist" isn't actually that popular

[Larry Pollack @pollacklarry22]

Andrew Biggs thread on the legal and economic nature of the Social Security trust fund

[Andrew G. Biggs @biggsag]

My take: the Social Security trust fund is "real" in a legal sense: so long as the trust fund's balance is positive, Congress will automatically appropriate $ to pay full benefits. If the fund is exhausted, benefits will automatically be cut. So that's a real impact. /1

https://t.co/tdmlybhZ1N