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Bubble after Bubble after Bubble

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California’s mismanaged state pensions and budgets are wreaking havoc on the state as Kevin D. Williamson’s writes at National Review in Penniless in Paradise:

“In 1999, at the peak of the dot-com stock-market bubble, California reformulated its pensions and other public-employee-compensation practices, making them much, much more liberal than they had been. The state’s Democrat-run legislature did this on the theory that pension investments would keep offering double-digit returns more or less forever, which led elected officials to make big promises and set aside approximately zilch to make good on them. If borrowing money to acquire an asset based on the theory that the appreciation of that asset will more than offset the cost of financing the borrowing sounds to you like the woeful tale of a million subprime mortgages, then they really could have used you in the California legislature a decade or so ago, or at Fannie Mae. In bubble after bubble after bubble, the country keeps repeating the practice that everybody swore off after the great market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression: investing on margin. California took out something very much like an adjustable-rate mortgage, financing present political consumption by in effect borrowing against future returns on the assets in its pension system — but the returns didn’t materialize. CalPERS, the gigantic statewide pension system, was until a few weeks ago projecting 7.5 percent returns on its investments. Real returns: just over 1 percent. The entirety of the state’s finances are from top to bottom exactly what one San Bernardino resident called his city’s fiscal charade: a shell game.”

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.
E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention. E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com. Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.