Best and Worst States for Pensions by Joel Anderson. In this article for Yahoo! Finance, Anderson ranks the “best” and “worst” states for public pensions based on their unfunded liabilities. As we’ve written before, judging states based on their funded status is highly misleading. An unfunded liability is merely the difference between “the total amount of benefits owed to ALL current employees & retirees and the value of the financial assets the pension plan manages.” A pension system never needs all of that money at once because a fund has a long time to earn investment returns from what employers and employees contribute. Furthermore, each pension plan provides a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) that shows the vast majority of retired public employees stay in the state they worked in during their career, which means they are reinvesting their pension benefits into their local economies. Stories like this are best viewed skeptically compared with the facts about public pensions.
Author(s): Tristan Fitzpatrick
Publication Date: 27 August 2021
Publication Site: National Public Pension Coalition
In the United States, many blood collection organizations initiated programs to test all blood donors for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, as a measure to increase donations and to assist in the identification of potential donors of COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP). As a result, it was possible to investigate the characteristics of healthy blood donors who had previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2. We report the findings from all blood donations collected by the American Red Cross, representing 40% of the national blood supply covering 44 States, in order to characterize the seroepidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection among blood donors in the United States, prior to authorized vaccine availability. We performed an observational cohort study from June 15th to November 30th, 2020 on a population of 1.531 million blood donors tested for antibodies to the S1 spike antigen of SARS-CoV-2 by person, place, time, ABO group and dynamics of test reactivity, with additional information from a survey of a subset of those with reactive test results. The overall seroreactivity was 4.22% increasing from 1.18 to 9.67% (June 2020 – November 2020); estimated incidence was 11.6 per hundred person-years, 1.86-times higher than that based upon reported cases in the general population over the same period. In multivariable analyses, seroreactivity was highest in the Midwest (5.21%), followed by the South (4.43%), West (3.43%) and Northeast (2.90%). Seroreactivity was highest among donors aged 18-24 (Odds Ratio 3.02 [95% Confidence Interval 2.80-3.26] vs age >55), African-Americans and Hispanics (1.50 [1.24-1.80] and 2.12 [1.89-2.36], respectively, vs Caucasian). Group O frequency was 51.5% among nonreactive, but 46.1% among seroreactive donors (P< .0001). Of surveyed donors, 45% reported no COVID-19-related symptoms, but 73% among those unaware of testing. Signal levels of antibody tests were stable over 120 days or more and there was little evidence of reinfection. Evaluation of a large population of healthy, voluntary blood donors provided evidence of widespread and increasing SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and demonstrated that at least 45% of those previously infected were asymptomatic. Epidemiologic findings were similar to those among clinically reported cases.
Author(s): Roger Y Dodd, Bryan R Spencer, Meng Xu 1, Gregory A Foster 1, Paula Saá 1, Jaye P Brodsky 2, Susan L Stramer 3
In the United States, many blood collection organizations initiated programs to test all blood donors for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, as a measure to increase donations and to assist in the identification of potential donors of COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP). As a result, it was possible to investigate the characteristics of healthy blood donors who had previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2. We report the findings from all blood donations collected by the American Red Cross, representing 40% of the national blood supply covering 44 States, in order to characterize the seroepidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection among blood donors in the United States, prior to authorized vaccine availability. We performed an observational cohort study from June 15th to November 30th, 2020 on a population of 1.531 million blood donors tested for antibodies to the S1 spike antigen of SARS-CoV-2 by person, place, time, ABO group and dynamics of test reactivity, with additional information from a survey of a subset of those with reactive test results. The overall seroreactivity was 4.22% increasing from 1.18 to 9.67% (June 2020 – November 2020); estimated incidence was 11.6 per hundred person-years, 1.86-times higher than that based upon reported cases in the general population over the same period. In multivariable analyses, seroreactivity was highest in the Midwest (5.21%), followed by the South (4.43%), West (3.43%) and Northeast (2.90%). Seroreactivity was highest among donors aged 18-24 (Odds Ratio 3.02 [95% Confidence Interval 2.80-3.26] vs age >55), African-Americans and Hispanics (1.50 [1.24-1.80] and 2.12 [1.89-2.36], respectively, vs Caucasian). Group O frequency was 51.5% among nonreactive, but 46.1% among seroreactive donors (P< .0001). Of surveyed donors, 45% reported no COVID-19-related symptoms, but 73% among those unaware of testing. Signal levels of antibody tests were stable over 120 days or more and there was little evidence of reinfection. Evaluation of a large population of healthy, voluntary blood donors provided evidence of widespread and increasing SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and demonstrated that at least 45% of those previously infected were asymptomatic. Epidemiologic findings were similar to those among clinically reported cases.
Author(s): Roger Y Dodd, Bryan R Spencer, Meng Xu 1, Gregory A Foster 1, Paula Saá 1, Jaye P Brodsky 2, Susan L Stramer 3
In fact, all of the damaging information that got Meng so upset that he quit was public, and it all came directly from or was generated by Meng.
Yet the CalPERS board acts as if it’s the victim of internal saboteurs. As the transcript shows, CEO Marcie Frost and her key allies on the board, Board President Henry Jones and board member Rob Feckner repeatedly and falsely present Meng as a victim of secrets having been tossed over the transom to the press. Not only was everything that embarrassed Meng out in the open for competent reporters to write up, but in at least one and arguably two cases, Meng’s defensiveness made his situation much worse.
As we’ll show, Frost used the bogus idea that CalPERS is full of traitors as an excuse for continuing to keep the board in the dark about crucial matters like Meng being investigated for his financial conflict of interest. Frost and Feckner also claim that Meng believed that his bad press was due to saboteurs. That suggests that Frost and other senior staffers stoked Meng’s paranoia and helped precipitate his departure.
Last January, a blip on the viral radar went unnoticed by much of the world. By the time the public became aware of an emerging pestilence—soon to be known as COVID-19—infectious disease researchers at Tarrytown-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., were already on the hunt for new drugs that could combat the disease.
Dr. Alina Baum, Associate Director for Infectious Diseases at Regeneron, is a trained virologist who has been with the company for almost six years and leads a 12-person research team. She recalled the urgency felt in the wake of the rising numbers COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. “In New York in April, it was terrifying,” she said. “Some of the people in my group were working 80-hour weeks trying to get a drug to the clinic.”
In February, the company started laboratory research; by June, their first human clinical trials testing treatment against COVID-19 were underway.
Earlier this year we repeated our analysis. This time we expanded it to cover a wider selection of open access journals, anticipating researchers and journals would be taking steps to prevent such errors appearing in their supplementary data files.
We were shocked to find in the period 2014 to 2020 that 3,436 articles, around 31% of our sample, contained gene name errors. It seems the problem has not gone away, and is actually getting worse.
Author(s): Mark Ziemann, Deakin University and Mandhri Abeysooriya, Deakin University
The long-term security of coastal regions depends not simply on climate, oceans and geography, but on multiple local factors, from the politics of foreign aid and investor confidence, to the quality of resilience-oriented designs and ‘managed retreat’.
Take some examples. In 2017, the drought in Cape Town and lack of resilient water infrastructure led to a downgrade by Moody’s. Wildfires in the Trinity Public Utilities District in California led to similar downgrades in 2019. Moody’s have developed a ‘heat map’3 that shows the credit exposure to environmental risk across sectors representing US$74.6 trillion in debt. In the short term, the unregulated utilities and power companies are exposed to ‘elevated risk’. The risks to automobile manufacturers, oil and gas independents and transport companies are growing. Blackrock’s report from April 2019, focused primarily on physical climate risk, showed that securities backed by commercial real estate mortgages could be confronted with losses of up to 3.8 per cent due to storm and flood related cash flow shortages.4 Climate change has already reduced local GDP, with Miami top of the list. The report was amongst the first to link high-level climate risk to location analysis of assets such as plants, property and equipment.
In other words, adaptation and resilience options are also uniquely local. The outcomes hinge on mapping long-term interdependencies to predict physical world changes and explore how core economic and social systems transition to a sustainable world.
My advice for actuaries looking to succeed outside the traditional function:
Push yourself to speak up more. Actuarial leaders know how to get the best out of you. It may not be the same experience with leaders in different areas of the business. So take advantage and speak up.
Have an opinion. So often I’ve worked with young actuaries who can perform incredible analysis but will stop short of providing an opinion and often defer to their manager or a senior actuary. As you move up the corporate ladder, you’re going to have to get more comfortable with providing your input with less and less data to work with.
If you are still toying with the idea of moving outside of a traditional actuarial role, it never hurts to widen your circle. Get to know the people in different areas of your company. Sit with an underwriter while they process a policy, shadow a claims adjuster while they work to help a customer during a stressful time of their life or connect with a member of your broker distribution team to find out what brokers or customers are saying. It will give you a whole new perspective on where the data you work with comes from.
DiNapoli announced today that he’s approved a recommendation by the State Retirement System Actuary to reduce, from 6.8 percent to 5.9 percent, the assumed rate of return (RoR) on investments by the $268 billion Common Retirement Fund, which underwrites the New York State and Local Employee Retirement System (NYSLERS) and Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS), of which the comptroller is the sole trustee.
To be sure, even at 5.9 percent, the RoR that the pension fund literally counts on to pay constitutionally guaranteed benefits will remain considerably higher than the yields from commensurate low-risk U.S. Treasury or high-quality corporate bonds, which currently range from 2.3 percent to 3.3 percent. Nonetheless, in isolation, cutting the RoR assumption is an unequivocally good and prudent thing for the comptroller to do.
Assuming lower earnings also tends to result in higher required contributions by employers—which is why politically sensitive public pension fund administrators across the country have tended to set their RoRs at much higher levels than those required for private corporate plans. To guard against volatility in investment returns, which has been especially pronounced over the past 25 years, DiNapoli and other pension fund administrators also resort to “asset smoothing” — i.e., counting average market returns over several years—as a basis for estimating the assets available to pay retirement benefits. In New York’s case, the smoothing period is five years.
At year-end 2020, the U.S. insurance industry reported $286 billion in high-yield bond exposure, an increase of just over 25% compared to year-end 2019 due in part to the broad-based credit impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
High-yield bonds accounted for 6.1% of the industry’s total bond exposure, the highest level in more than 10 years and an increase from 5.1% at year-end 2019.
High-yield corporate bonds, asset-backed securities (ABS) and other structured securities, and private-label commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) were the primary contributors to the increase in high-yield exposure.
Author(s): Michele Wong and Jean-Baptiste Carelus
Publication Date: 6 August 2021
Publication Site: NAIC, Capital Markets Special Report
Delivering another blow to what’s left of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s legacy, New York’s new governor acknowledged on her first day in office that the state has had nearly 12,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than Cuomo told the public.
“The public deserves a clear, honest picture of what’s happening. And that’s whether it’s good or bad, they need to know the truth. And that’s how we restore confidence,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said on NPR.
In its first daily update on the outbreak Tuesday evening, Hochul’s office reported that nearly 55,400 people have died of the coronavirus in New York based on death certificate data submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That’s up from about 43,400 that Cuomo reported to the public as of Monday, his last day in office. The Democrat who was once widely acclaimed for his leadership during the COVID-19 outbreak resigned in the face of an impeachment drive after being accused of sexually harassing at least 11 women, allegations he disputed.
The higher number is not entirely new. Federal health officials and some academic institutions tracking COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have been using the higher tally for many months because of known gaps in the data Cuomo had been choosing to publicize.
