Harrah's, Apollo Management, and CalPERS/CalSTRS debacle on Facebook

The "Harrah's, Apollo Management and CalPERS/CalSTRS debacle" page on Facebook.

Here is an email I sent to the California State Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. As a ordinary concerned Californian (we are to be ignored) the message wasn't important and they referred it to a Assembly committee to die:

Dear Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes,

The Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters wrote on 3/8/10 in the article "Legislative "oversight" unit misses mark" - "How about the scandal at the California Public Employees' Retirement System over huge payments to "placement agents" who obtain multibillion-dollar investments for their clients? Many of them have been money losers, adding to the fund's huge value decline that taxpayers will have to cover.

How about the anomaly of CalPERS buying a $600 million chunk of Apollo Global Management, a conspicuous employer of placement agents, only to see that stake decline by more than 75 percent? How about a belated examination of how and why Apollo founder Leon Black persuaded U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, then the state insurance commissioner, to seize the junk bond portfolio of a big insurance company and then resell it some to some shadowy French investors for billions less than its value?

But wait. The same unions that hate furloughs also control the CalPERS board that made those sucker bets. Just a coincidence? When the Legislature stops wasting taxpayer- financed time on trivia and bores into the CalPERS debacle, maybe we'll take its "oversight" seriously."

Walters article fired me up again about the CalPERS scandal involving Leon Black's Apollo Management and the ignoring of money lost by CalPERS/CalSTRS at the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes. As a lifelong resident of California, I am outraged that Black got away with looting billions from our state pension funds and am willing to work (for free) for your office to research the "outcome" of this topic. Are California's taxpayers on the hook due to the "restructuring" of $4 billion debt announced by Apollo Management this week? Below is an article I wrote published in Nov 09 and "flash forward" to now. Google CalPERS + Apollo Management to find the article highly placed on Google Web or Blogs search engines. The article is titled "Harrah's, Apollo Management, and CalPERS/CalSTRS debacle" and it has drawn much interest.

Article sent to the Senate Committee on Facebook