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The Daily News looks at how the city taxpayers are "on the hook for $20 million," thanks to a Bronx surrogate judge. When people die without wills, the city has public administrators who handle their assets "until the court approves a settlement." While the PAs are supposed to invest conservatively, like in treasury bills, Judge Lee Holzman allowed two administrators invest $20 million in riskier auction-rate securities, which got hammered in this year. The city now how has to pay the heirs their owed money while hoping the securities bounce back--but the lawyers and accountants who handled the transactions get to keep their millions in fees. City Comptroller William Thompson said he was "extremely troubled" taxpayers would "foot the bill for these ill-considered and financially irresponsible decisions."
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Jen, I have seen you write many many posts with terrible grammar. This opening sentence is by far the worst. Don't you have a grammar check on your word processor? Please reread in the future.
King Kong, I don't think that's the worst sentence I've ever written.
Its must be one of the least accurate, according to the story posted
hey it's not their money, what do they care?
they'll still get their fees so might as well go to town. another scam. thankfully Pb is still cheap, no scams there, my friend.
Scam is the word.
Must be nice to know a judge.
They all do it: college endowment administrators, state permanent fund managers, non-profit investment advisors, and so on. if nobody's minding these clever bastards, they run amok and try to juice up their fees and percentages. And it always ends up the same way: that "drive home from Vegas".
For all I know, the public administrators were indeed corrupt, but I see no evidence of it in the article. Auction-rate securities have been around since the 1980s, and they were never "risky" until the recent and in some ways unprecedented panic in credit markets.
Auction-rate securities are essentially a shorter-term variation on municipal bonds. They are backed by solid assets, and they allow more flexibility in cashing out than would T-Bills. This could be seen as advantageous if you're investing money that you know is going to be paid out, but you don't know when.
The underlying assets (e.g., those of a municipal water company) are still there, and the investors in auction-rate securities will almost certainly get their money back--it'll just take time to work out.
Summary: They may be villains, but investing in auction-rate securities was not villainous; it may well have seemed one of the better investment strategies for the intended purpose.
King Kong,#1
I don't see misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, noun/verb disagreement, or the like.
What is wrong precisely with her grammar in the first sentence? There are a couple of minor grammatical errors in the entire story, but very minor, except to a pedant.
Instead of criticizing, which is easy, please explain your problems with her grammar and how you would fix it.
Otherwise, if you are unhappy with the writing of the Gothamist staffers, write in and perhaps they will refund the price of your subscription, Shakespeare.
Grammar police are out again. Grammar police are nothing but trolls on the Internet.
She fixed her post. Thank you. All I ask is that you hire an Indian or some other cheap English speaking laborer to check the posts.