Robin Hood

American mythology doesn't have a Robin Hood. Instead, the United States has Robber Barons. They are America's heroes, theirs its inspiriting social myth.

Richard Nixon was a minor thief, but his bragging about his wealth--"I am now a millionaire," he said as president--was what got Woodward and Bernstein sniffing. He was only pursuing the American Dream in a minor way, but it did him in.

But stealing a million is nothing these days. And in moral terms, greed is theft: theft from the idea of community, of society. Bill Gates--a Great American, by current standards--could fund St. Martin, St. Francis, Don Quixote, Pablo Escobar, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and several thousand other Robin Hoods, and provide food for all the millions of starving people in the world on nothing but the interest he earns on his $90,000,000,000 fortune. So could the Catholic Church, of course.

And. . . .

I am reminded of all this by a 245-page pamphlet I received in the mail today from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, the organisation which manages most of America's teachers' retirement programs.

The pamphlet was offering TIAA investors "a tax-deferred variable annuity option." The prospectus warns would-be investors that they may lose money by investing in ths program, and it notes that the expected annual administrative costs are one percent of the amount invested; it also notes that TIAA guarantees that the annual administrative expense deductions will not exceed two and a half percent of investment funds.

What the prospectus calls "TIAA's total statutory admitted assets" in 2011 were $225,900,000,000. One assumes that "admitted assets" means TIAA has more--perhaps considerably more?--assets than $225,900,000,000. So it charges its investors at least $2,500,000,000 for administration, and maybe as much as $6,500,000,000.

And the good people at TIAA are helping teachers all over America--few of them, even in 2012, who will ever earn, in all their working lives, $1,000,000. But these hard-working teachzers will not get rich from their investments in TIAA.

And part of their retirement funds will go to the president of TIAA, who takes home more than $7,000,000 each year. That's $7,000,000 of the money that America's teachers invest for their retirement. He is small potatoes in the greed market,of course, a very minor Robber Baron. But he IS a Robber Baron. Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., born in 1951, has been president of TIAA for four years this month.