So I am in the process of moving on to my next installment of The Ghost Bomb Six. If you are not familiar with what that means, here it is in a nutshell:
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In the spring of 2020 there were some places in this country that saw very unseasonal increased mortality.
In the following year (fiscal year 2021) many of these same places had huge windfalls in their public employee pension plans due to historic investment gains.
These investment gains were happening simultaneously with additional increased member mortality into 2021 and beyond.
A look back at the solvency of these same pension plans in 2019 shows that many of these locations that had the strange 2020 spring death surge were in pretty bad financial shape right before the pandemic hit.
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Previously I pointed out that in the 14 US state locations that saw this big spring mortality spike, there were six that also showed up in the bottom ten of the worst pensions of 2019.
Since I have dubbed that April/May death surge the “Ghost Bomb,” these places are now the Ghost Bomb Six.
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Well, where was I? …
… oh yes, waiting in the wings for the next installment is New Jersey{No.3}.
As I was poking around the web gathering data on the Garden State, I came across some information that really caught my attention - and I thought it would be a good idea to just take a moment to let you know what that was.
I was doing my normal interrogation of poor little ChatGPT on various aspects of New Jersey’s awesome investment returns in 2021, when I decided to expand the net a little:
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“You said:
For fiscal 2021, is there a better state investment return than this one?
ChatGPT said:
Yes — New Jersey’s ~28.6 % investment return for its fiscal year 2021 was excellent, but other public pension funds reported even higher returns for that year. Based on available reporting and proprietary databases of state pension returns for FY 2021:
Reported High Pension Returns in FY 2021
1. Delaware State Employees’ Pension Plan (SEPP)
Reported one of the highest returns among U.S. state plans at ~38.4 % for FY 2021 (June 30 YE).
2. Louisiana Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS)
Reported approximately 35.7 % return for FY 2021.
3. Louisiana School Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS)
Around 35.6 % return for FY 2021.
4. New York State Common Retirement Fund
Achieved about 33.6 % return for its fiscal year (ended March 31, 2021), the highest in its history at the time.
5. Mississippi Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS)
Reported around 32.7 % return for FY 2021.
6. Louisiana State Police Retirement System (SPRS)
Around 32.1 % return.
These figures come from a state-pension-focused research compilation that shows the highest reported FY 2021 investment returns across U.S. state public pension plans, placing NJ’s ~28.6 % return well below the top performers for that year.”
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We already know that New York is coming up later in the Ghost Bomb Six series, so we will wait on that one.
Mississippi is really not part of this story in any respect - it did not have a strange April/May 2020 jump in deaths and it was right in the middle of the rankings for the pension plan solvency in 2019.
But those other two on Chat’s list up there are the ones that piqued my interest.
“… The public pension plan reporting the highest returns for fiscal 2021 was the Delaware State Employees’ Pension Plan, which returned 38.4%, followed by the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL) and the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS), which returned 35.7% and 35.6%, respectively …”
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So it would seem to be accurate that the best of the best for investment gains in 2021 (Delaware and Louisiana), just happen to be two of the fourteen states that saw a Ghost Bomb go off!
The stock gains/windfalls are still amazing to me. And these gains happened when the world was coming to an end with the mother of all pandemics. But the death bombs are sinister as hell. Keep on keeping on and thanks for your citizen research.
The stock gains/windfalls are still amazing to me. And these gains happened when the world was coming to an end with the mother of all pandemics. But the death bombs are sinister as hell. Keep on keeping on and thanks for your citizen research.
So nifty, huh? So surreptitious with your lone voice pointing out the statistics and their significance.