If a state or local government’s public pension funds have large unfunded liabilities, those liabilities accrue at the assumed rate of return on the assets that should have been there to cover that liability.
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The point is this: if it makes sense to pay down the pension unfunded liability with muni bonds, thus creating new liabilities and thus new leverage, it makes even more sense to take a “windfall” of cash and pay down the pension debt, which creates no new state/local government liabilities
So you can see how the dominating states change in the House of Representatives:
in 1910, it was Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York
in 2010, it was New York, California, Texas, and Florida
While New York was a large state throughout this visualization, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois dropped out and California, Texas, and Florida rose up.
A few remarks — the total public pension unfunded liability (using the discount rates they themselves use, that is, too high, and thus valuing the unfunded liability too little) is the same size as the full American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 — that is, $1.9 trillion.
That is not how much is getting shoveled to the various state and local governments.
Except it seems Cuomo was the only one who had his staff falsify data. So perhaps the others can get away with just admitting they made decisions that were very unwise.
As it is, the New York state legislature is starting an impeachment investigation, and I assume they’re not going to half-ass it like other impeachments we have heard tell of.
From what I know, which is (if I’m being generous) 10% of the available information:
zoonotic origin (animal to human) is not off the table. This is a plausible theory. Also, we have no hard evidence supporting it. In fact, there is a frustrating lack of evidence supporting it.
lab escape is not off the table. This is a plausible theory with precedent. We have no hard evidence supporting it. But also, the CCP has closed the door on investigating this possibility so we are unlikely to learn any new information on this absent a defection from a Chinese scientist or researcher.
lab manipulation is unlikely, though “manipulation” is a really generous term. It could mean anything from “the virus mutated in the lab to become more dangerous” to “they used some intentional genetic manipulation technology to make it more dangerous”. Again… I find this unlikely and we absolutely zero evidence that this was done.
Author(s): PoliMath
Publication Date: 9 March 2021
Publication Site: Marginally Compelling at Substack
Here are the whole-number ratios if you can’t eyeball the relationships above.
The total MEP unfunded liability is 8 times that of the bailout bill amount
The total public pension unfunded liability is 22 times that of the bailout bill amount (this happens to be the same as the total American Rescue Plan Act of 2021)
The total Social Security shortfall is almost 200 times that of the MEP bailout bill
Now, you can say that they are just about to add $2 trillion to the federal debt, so what’s $2 trillion more? (and yes, people will be saying that – we shall see how much that money printer can go BRRRRRR)
In my own opinion, the standard measures for DB pension shortfalls greatly underestimate the cash flows needed, given this time of extremely low interest rates. But still, let’s pretend.
The public pension bailout would be at least 20 times the amount of a MEP bailout. Just because you bailout a set of pensions that would have pulled down a federal guarantee fund (the PBGC) does not mean you’re going to bailout other pensions that are much bigger and that you never guaranteed in the first place.
If that’s what the vaccine trials were measuring—the height of thewall that is our immune system comparing vaccine effectiveness would make a lot of sense. Many high-profile, highly-credentialed people have been (misleadingly) describing it exactly in that manner: that if a vaccine is 95% effective, those 5% are left “unprotected.” If Moderna and Pfizer and 95% efficacious, and if Johnson and Johnson is 66%—well, that would mean that 34% of the people are left “unprotected.” right?
Wrong. To get to why that assumption is not right—and why those vaccine efficacy numbers are not the height of the wall that represents the immune system—let me first mention something important The two mRNA vaccines do appear to be spectacular, but they were tested under conditions where those pesky “variants-of-concern”—the B.117 (UK one) and B. 1.351 (South Africa) and P1–were not widespread. If tested now, under equal conditions, those numbers may be closer. Plus, Johnson & Johnson is a single-shot with a trial with a booster underway. So those efficacy numbers may well be much closer in reality than they appear from the trial results. But let’s leave that aside for a moment.
The first big improvement in the U.S. was in child mortality in the early 20th century — public health measures helped all ages, but the youngest the most. Then antibiotics and more and more vaccines improved mortality across the board, with children and young adults getting the most benefits. Improved auto safety and more stringent drunk driving laws helped all ages, but young adults the most (because they were the most idiotic drivers). We’ve seen improvements in middle age into old age due to reduced smoking and improved medical treatments — people who used to get their first heart attack in their 50s now see their first heart attack in their 70s… and it’s a lot less fatal now. And we’ve had amazing improvement in mortality at older ages.
It is very tempting to write a book about all the mortality trends we’ve got going on. The CDC has the data. They’ve issued reports on it. But few people really want to think about death. I’ll add it to my ever-expanding list of project ideas… (hey, Actuarial News was an idea for me for over a year… and now it’s here!)
R in most US states right now is closely clustered around 1. Mutant strains are more contagious, enough to bring the R0 up to 1.5 or so. But having a lot of the population vaccinated will bring it back down again. Also, I’m acting like there’s some complex-yet-illuminating calculation we can do here, but realistically none of this matters. It’s not a coincidence that all US states are closely clustered around 1. It’s the control system again – whenever things look good, we relax restrictions (both legally and in terms of personal behavior) until they look bad again, then backpedal and tighten restrictions. So we oscillate between like 0.8 and 1.2 (I made those numbers up, I don’t know the real ones). If vaccines made R0 go to 0.5 or whatever, we would loosen some restrictions until it was back at 1 again. So unless we overwhelm the control system, R0 will hover around 1 in the summer too, and the only question is how strict our lockdowns will be.
In autumn, if we haven’t already vaccinated everyone there’s a risk things will get worse again because of the seasonal effect. Also, for all we know maybe the virus will have mutated even further and become even more vaccine resistant. Now what?
“There’s only one model that we look at that has the number of projected deaths which is the IHME model which is funded by the Gates Foundation,” Cuomo said on April 2, adding, “and we thank the Gates Foundation for the national service that they’ve done.”
In an April 9 briefing, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer referred to the IHME model in order to project deaths and the PPE resources needed for the supposed surge.
It was the same story with the government of Pennsylvania. The PA Health Department exclusively uses IHME models to forecast coronavirus outcomes.
Governor Phil Murphy, another nursing home death warrant participant, used IHME models to navigate the state’s policy response.
