Ob·fus·cate
ˈäbfəˌskāt/, verb
- - render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible.
Pension matters update:
The draft Memorandum of Understanding with its potential risks to the system of checks and balances that has kept our Fund healthy for 65 years was placed in the deep freeze by the Under-Secretary-General for Management, Yukio Takasu, this past July and, hopefully, will remain safely on ice. Still, despite consistent and more frequent reporting in the media (see previous post titled 'Pension gaps remain while hedge funds gorge on fees'), it's unclear to what extent the reality of the pitfalls of riskier investments such as hedge funds has been taken on board by the Fund's investment decision-makers, i.e., the RSG, the Investments Committee, the Pension Board, or, for that matter, by the leadership of our UN retiree representative organization, AFICS.
We're currently wading through the report of the Pension Board Chairman to the Fifth Committee (Nov. 10, 2015), and the Pension Fund's report to the GA (August 14, 2015) posted on the AFICS website (links below).
The report is posted on the AFICS website with no comment. We look forward to the day that the AFICS leadership might consider going a step further to provide some brief commentary on the most relevant sections of these, often specialized and technical, reports (206 pages long in this case) for the benefit of its membership.
