Politicians promise workers higher returns than can be achieved and you want to blame the markets?
Sigh...
Politicians aren't selling pension investments...the investment funds are. If Investment Fund X is telling the pension managers that investing with them will result in X% of growth, but then X% of growth never happens, you are saying it's on the politicians (?) and not the investment funds for over-promising? But how could that be when it was the Investment Fund that made the over-promise to the pension manager? How is it the politician's fault (and subsequently, how is it a teacher's fault) if an investment fund was peddling a gallon of snake-oil?
Just curious...do you know if CALPERS had invested in funds in the mid-2000's that were also trading in all those risky subprimes and derivatives? And was CALPERS unwittingly investing in funds that held those securities? Because that's exactly what happened to almost all public pensions during the economic collapse. Investment funds were peddling miraculous growth in certain sectors and markets, and pitched those on to unsuspecting pension funds who were denied the true risk of the products in which they were investing.
So why should public employees bear the burden of consequences for that? Shouldn't the investment funds? Shouldn't the banks? They're the ones who made these promises, after all. Promises we now know were made in bad faith because they were concealing the true risk of their product.