There has been a lot of attention given to the pension crisis afflicting our states. The same problem also effects cities. Often the government bureaucrats who peddled these pension plans used gimmicky accounting tricks or overly optimistic (if not delusional) claims regarding expected returns (these forecasts allowed them to escape from having to put more money in the pension funds to meet obligations).But sometimes city leaders just rewarded contracts to manage pension funds as part of the Friend and Family plan so they could, in Obama's words, spread the wealth. And most major cities are run by Democrats.Case in point: Cook County - the den of iniquity that birthed Barack Obama.The Chicago Tribune reports the latest scandal:Trustees of Chicago's failing public pension funds have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into highly speculative investments that not only have failed to realize outsize returns but also saddled them with underperforming, long-term assets that can't be...(Read Full Post)