Word: pension
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Long before the power crisis, California and Enron got along just fine. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation's largest pension fund investor, had invested $250 million in one of the first of Enron's now-infamous off-balance-sheet partnerships - called JEDI - and got a 73 percent return over just three years. Small wonder then that when Enron execs came back in 1997 with JEDI II, a similar vehicle to invest in energy projects, including Enron's own Energy Services, CalPERS listened...
...Connell, who is not running for office again, is pushing for the nation's largest pension funds - those in California, New York and Texas - to lead reform in on 401(k) and accounting practices by themselves. "I have no confidence in Congress seeing any significant reform through," she says. "But we represent about 10 percent of all stock ownership in the country, and we can hammer through changes regardless of Congress - if we are emphatic about not investing in companies that don't change certain practices...
...with people's fears about their own retirement exceeding their appetite for campaign reform and their anger at what the now bankrupt company did. "Many employees looked at what happened to Enron, and it scares them to death," says Ohio Congressman John Boehner, the House Republicans' point man on pension issues. This is why the biggest news out of the retreat was the package of 401(k) and pension safeguards Bush unveiled there Friday...
...about the 401(k) plans that 42 million Americans are counting on to carry them through retirement. Suddenly voters are paying more attention to the solvency of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and wondering whether Medicare will pay for their prescription drugs. Across the country, state employee pension funds are hemorrhaging because of their Enron investments. "Enron has the ability to color a broad range of issues," consultants James Carville, Stan Greenberg and Bob Shrum wrote in a memo to Democrats last week. "The more people hear, the more corrosive it becomes...
...There is nothing inherently sinister about special-purpose entities, and Enron's initial investors did well because the deals were straightforward. CalPERS, the California state pension system and one of the nation's largest institutional investors, put $250 million into an spe called jedi i, which invested in natural gas projects. CalPERS got back $433 million, a spiffy 73% return over four years...