KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Sunday September 26 Housing and Economic stories

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SEIU Helps Bank Workers Become Whistleblowers - (www.huffingtonpost.com) Union's new campaign part of larger effort to unionize banks. One of the best kept secrets of the financial reform bill passed in July is tough whistleblower laws to protect bank workers who expose shady lending, credit card and fee practices. But do U.S. bank workers actually know about the new protections? A new Service Employees union campaign aims to make sure they do. SEIU is launching a campaign encouraging bank customers to do two things when at the bank, says SEIU Financial Director Stephen Lerner. "One: do your normal banking. And then two, inform bank workers of their rights under the new whistleblower laws." The union is encouraging its members, community allies, and activists to print up these whistleblower fliers and give them to tellers and personal bankers anytime they're banking.

Audit of Federal Stimulus Funds in Los Angeles Shows $111 Million in ARRA Grants Has Only Created 55 Jobs - (www.huffingtonpost.com) I released two very disappointing audits today of how the City of Los Angeles has used American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. The audits looked at the how the two departments that have received the largest amount of ARRA funding so far - the Department of Transportation (LADOT) and the Department of Public Works (DPW) - have used those funds and how many jobs were created. Los Angeles has become the largest City in America to conduct an audit of how ARRA funds have been expended. DPW has received $70.65 million and created or retained 45.46 jobs, though they are expected to create 238 jobs overall (the fraction of a job created or retained correlates to the number of actual hours works). LADOT has been awarded $40.8 million and created or retained 9 jobs, though they are expected to create 26 jobs overall. Overall, the Departments have received $111 million in federal stimulus funds out of the $594 million the City has been awarded so far and created or retained 54.46 jobs. I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million in ARRA funds. With our local unemployment rate over 12% we need to do a better job cutting the red tape and putting Angelenos back to work.

New York Pension Fund Drop = Tax Rise - (www.timesunion.com) Mandatory pension contributions for the state as well as municipalities -- including cities, towns and counties -- will jump 37 percent within two years thanks to a drop in the value of the recession-battered pension fund, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Thursday. And that likely means higher property taxes, deep cuts, or a combination of the two are just around the corner. "Unfortunately, it takes the economy a lot longer to climb out of a hole than it takes to fall in it," DiNapoli said when he announced the rising contributions. The percentage of their payrolls that governments will have to pay toward pension benefits will rise from an average of 11.9 percent to 16.3 percent for the payments due in February 2012. Many municipalities make that payment several months earlier to get a modest discount. For police and firefighters, who are in a different, more generous pension system, the contribution will go from 18.2 percent of payroll to 21.6 percent. That's a 19 percent rise. The bad pension news was pounced on by Republican Harry Wilson, who is challenging Democratic incumbent DiNapoli for the comptroller's job.

NJ gov. decries generous `fairy-tale promises' - (finance.yahoo.com) After telegraphing his intentions for months, Christie spelled out the details of his proposal Tuesday. They include: repealing an increase in benefits approved years ago; eliminating automatic cost-of-living adjustments; raising the retirement age to 65 from 60 in many cases; reducing pension payouts for many future retirees; and requiring some employees to contribute more to their pensions. "We must reverse the damage caused by fairy-tale promises that have fattened benefits and pensions to unsustainable levels," the governor said. Christie has warned that New Jersey's pension fund will go belly up unless something is done to close the $46 billion gap between how much the state expects to bring into the system and how much it has promised to workers. Other states' pension funds are in shaky condition, too. Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, says it may be unprecedented that so many states at once are raising employees' pension contribution rates.

How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship - (www.nytimes.com) Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, but when Allison Brooke Eastman’s fiancé found out four months ago just how high her student loan debt was, he had a particularly strong reaction: he broke off the engagement within three days. Ms. Eastman said she had told him early on in their relationship that she had over $100,000 of debt. But as the couple got closer to their wedding day, she took out all the paperwork and it became clear that her total debt was actually about $170,000. “He accused me of lying,” said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor’s degree in photography. “But if I was lying, I was lying to myself, not to him. I didn’t really want to know the full amount.” Ms. Tidwell, 26, is involved in a serious relationship with Stefan Kogler, an architect who is a native of Austria and living in Vienna. To Europeans, who often pay little or nothing toward their university studies, the idea of going deeply into debt to get educated is, well, foreign. Ms. Tidwell feels no guilt about the $250,000 in debt she will probably run up, including some from a master’s degree program she completed in London, where she and Mr. Kogler met. “I didn’t acquire it because I go out and shop a lot,” she said. “It’s because I’m doing something that I’ll love for the rest of my life.”