生命是桃子

Keep it simple.

That's the motto of the $42.4 billion Teachers Retirement System of Georgia and the $12.4 billion Employees' Retirement System of Georgia, and it doesn't get much simpler than their current asset allocation: U.S stocks and a smattering of foreign equities; U.S. Treasuries and a few investment-grade bonds; cash. Strictly verboten: foreign and high-yield bonds, distressed debt, real estate, private equity and anything resembling a hedge fund.

无论如何，这种方法都不能更加基本或更老式，或者，过去几年，更恰当。这两个计划是只有少数的国家退休系统，这些系统被过剩​​，其资产的价值超过了负债的价值。截至2003年6月30日，最新数据的佐治亚教师的资金比例为101.1％;员工计划资助100.5％。咨询公司Wilshire Associates介绍，2003年底，2003年底的国家计划的中位数汇价为79％。

“我们的方法是在很长一段时间内一直在持续应用的保守主义和渐进主义之一，”Charles（Bill）Cary Jr.表示投资服务司以及Cochief Investminer Nancie Boedy。该部门总部位于亚特兰大西北地区的低层20世纪60年代 - 复古钢铁和玻璃建筑中，管理了该计划的资产，涵盖了207,000名教师和74,000名国家工人。向W. Daniel Ebersole，国家财务主管和两个计划投资委员会的董事长报告。投资政策或战略的任何重大变化必须由计划的受托人委员会批准。

Why are the Georgia plans overfunded when so many public retirement systems are grappling with swollen deficits? Credit conservative asset allocation and actuarial assumptions, strict fiscal controls, tough vesting rules and a statutory requirement that any increase in retiree benefits be immediately funded when it was authorized by the state legislature.

在其资产allocat典型的保守主义ion, the teachers' plan keeps 47 percent of assets in U.S. and Canadian equities; 4.8 percent in foreign equities; 40.2 percent in U.S. Treasuries; 6 percent in investment-grade bonds and 2 percent in cash. (The Employees' plan follows a very similar asset allocation.) For its fiscal year ended June 30, 2003, Georgia Teachers returned 4.6 percent, compared with 4 percent for the median public plan, according to Wilshire Associates' Trust Universe Comparison Service survey. Over three years the Georgia plans returned 1.6 percent, despite a $129 million loss on their Enron Corp. stake, versus the TUCS median of 2.3 percent. But over five years, which include the final year of the bull market, Georgia's cautious approach caused it to underperform, returning an average annual 2.6 percent, versus the 3 percent median.

国家法律要求资金严格的财政控制。1983年颁布的公共退休系统标准法要求国家立法机构在授权增加的同时支付任何退休人员福利的适当资金。很少有国家有这样的狭窄。此外，该计划做出了非常保守的精算假设。因为他们假设资产的回报率较低 - 当前的假设为员工计划的7％，员工的基金为7.25％，而且大多数公共计划的8％ - 国家政府必须更大对计划的贡献而不是否则。

Last, although Georgia pays retiree benefits that are slightly above the median for state plans, its vesting rules are considerably less generous. Both plans require ten years of service, twice the industry norm, before workers are fully vested and thus eligible to receive their employer's contribution to the plan.

"We've always taken a conservative fiscal approach," says state auditor Russell Hinton, a member of the investment committees of the boards of both plans. "We've stayed away from accounting gimmicks and raids on our pension funds."

"It's admirable that Georgia has a process in place that controls the degree to which funding can deteriorate," says Robin Pellish, CEO of Greenwich, Connecticutbased Rocaton Investment Advisors, a leading pension consulting firm. "At a time when markets were underperforming, this process led the legislature [during the three fiscal years ended June 30, 2003] to put enough assets in the fund to meet their ongoing liabilities."

Beneficiaries appreciate the plans' funding status. "It means my welfare and benefits are secure, and I don't have any apprehensions about my benefits for as long as I live," says Burney Lester, 72, a Macon, Georgia, retiree who taught high school science and worked as a junior high school principal.

不太令人钦佩的是大会在2000年通过法律授权立法退休制度委员会的法律，该委员会负责监督雇员退休系统的法律，以增加国家立法者的退休福利（见专栏）。

Unquestionably, though, fiscal prudence helped the state plans weather the perfect storm that struck pension funds from 2000 through 2002. During this period a disastrous combination of declining stock prices, which depressed the value of plan assets, and falling interest rates, which increased the present value of future liabilities, left many public plans under water. Although 2003's strong equity markets were a positive -- median public plan assets grew 22.7 percent -- falling interest rates meant that liabilities continued to grow.

While Georgia's funding constraints and asset allocation are unusual, in other respects its pension funds are well within industry norms. Nearly 75 percent of fund assets are managed in-house. All of the internally managed equity assets are in index or enhanced index funds; all the fixed-income portfolios are actively managed.

剩下的25％的基金资产，全部股权，由11个外部货币管理人员处理，包括美国资本管理，常青投资，NCM资本管理集团，州街全球顾问和七家小佐治亚州的七家小型格鲁吉亚公司。作为一组，11名经理截至2003年6月30日止三年的平均年度返回率为11.9％，略差比标准差和穷人的500指数的11.2％的下降略差。

Fiscal 2004 results won't be reported until next July, but no abrupt moves are expected. "Our investment strategy is evolutionary," says Ebersole. "We don't make sudden changes."

如果格鲁吉亚的养老基金的管理a throwback to a simpler time, so too do the careers of chief investment officer Cary and cochief investment officer Boedy. Both arrived at the Division of Investment Services in the 1970s and have worked there ever since.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Cary earned his BA from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his MBA from Georgia State University. He joined the DIS in 1972 as a security analyst and was named assistant director in 1976. In 1988 he became CIO.

Boedy, a Chicago native, earned her BA from Northwestern University. After working for a few years as a research analyst at several Atlanta brokerages, she joined the DIS in 1977 as a senior security analyst. Several years later she won a promotion to portfolio officer and in 1988 signed on as cochief investment officer.

直到1970年代早期, Georgia Teachers, which was established in 1943, and the state employees' plan, set up six years later, invested mainly in fixed income. In 1972 the state legislature passed a law allowing the pension funds to invest up to 50 percent of plan assets in equities. The limit rose to 60 percent in July 2000. That was fortuitous, of course, because it meant that the Georgia funds were constrained from loading up on stocks until after the Nasdaq cracked.

It was also in 1972 that the state government set up the DIS to manage plan assets. Through the decades the division and the plans' trustees have worked closely together. By all accounts it has been a harmonious relationship. "When we decide to change allocation targets," Boedy reports, "we forge a consensus between the board and the DIS staff."

At key junctures, though, the spark for changes in investment strategy has come from the state legislature, not the DIS. In 1995, for example, the retirement committees of the state senate and house introduced legislation to permit the funds to invest up to 5 percent of plan assets in foreign stocks and bonds. In 2000 the cap was raised to 10 percent.

在艰难的2000'02期间，计划“以上平均水平分配到固定收入的展位。截至2003年6月30日的三个财政年度，佐治亚州的财政部重定期收入组合返回平均每年11.3％，而雷曼兄弟汇总债券指数的10.8％。

On the other hand, Georgia's equity portfolios have underperformed some benchmarks. For the fiscal year ended June 2003, they returned 2.1 percent, versus 1.5 percent for the S&P 500.

Thanks to its approach, Georgia, unlike many states and municipalities, has not been forced to issue pension obligation bonds to prop up underfunded pension plans. And while the median state plan funding ratio dropped from 115 percent in 2000 to 79 percent in 2003, the Georgia plans' funding ratios held between 100 percent and 104 percent during the same period. According to consulting firm Wilshire Associates, several other plans, including the Regents of the University of California, the New Jersey State Police Retirement System and the North Carolina Public Employee Retirement System, were overfunded as of June 30, 2003. But they report actuarial data a year or more late, as does Georgia.

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The Georgia plans do not track what percentage of the workforce fails to become vested, but the rules clearly give Georgia a comparative funding advantage over state pension funds that vest their employees after five years. Twenty years ago, explains Nancy McKenzie, the pension specialist at the National Education Association, most teachers' retirement systems had ten-year vesting. But after Congress in the 1980s required corporate funds to move to five-year vesting, many teachers' plans began to make a similar move. "Plans with ten-year vesting have become the minority," says McKenzie.

如果格鲁吉亚的五年教学退伍军人有资格获得退休福利，并且其付款已被列入整体平均值，那么所有其他相同的东西都会带来了佐治亚州目前的每月平均福利2,072美元。

美国精选院校的高级养老金研究员罗恩Gebhardtsbauers“这依赖于变量 - 员工留下了多长时间，他们赚取的是什么，但其中包括五年至十年的工人可能有一个相当重大的重要性影响平均利益。“当然，艰难的归属规则有助于支持计划的强劲资金状况，而且反过来加强了国家的财政状况，帮助格鲁吉亚在其一般义务债券上维持从标准普尔的AAA评级。目前只能获得标准普尔的三倍的状态。

But the state's finances face other threats. At the moment, Georgia's budget is balanced with virtually no room to spare. If the state faced a budget crisis, it might be hard-pressed to make full contributions to the pension funds.

2000'01经济衰退和随后的关键亚特兰大地区的血症恢复 - 受电信和旅游业的弱点驱动 - 已达成协调。共和党州长邓·普通州的行政估计，2005年6月30日财政年度汇丰的盈余将仅为1.45亿美元，或2004年预算的1％为145亿美元。

"The state's 2004 budget projections turned out to be ambitious," says S&P analyst Ken Gear. But for fiscal 2005, he notes, the government set reasonable targets and is controlling spending. It's taking a conservative approach.

因此，也是在管理佐治亚州养老基金的情况下是Cary和Boedy。虽然其他养老金官员对新的对冲基金经理和设计精心制定的资产配置战略，但格鲁吉亚民间正在坚持他们的股票和债券。他们的投资方法就像它一样简单。但是，当它与财政控制和保守会计结合时，结果确实令人印象深刻。