NOM

Well, I guess that explains why they did that little financial Q&A on Mormon Newsroom last week, ya think?

https://mormonleaks.io/wiki/index.php?t ... mon_Church

That will be an interesting discussion, particularly in concert with the concept that paying tithing will lift people out of poverty. Seems to have lifted the church out of poverty, no question! I think this will become a bigger story as the Peggy Fletcher Stacks of the world do a little digging.

Looking forward to updates on this.

Wow.

I don't see this as a big deal but rather financial and risk management. What should we expect from a corporation that brings in billions of dollars a year in contribution revenue?

What are they supposed to do with all of the money? Stuff like this is awesome to read about and watch the exmo sensationalism explode over it but where's the cover up? Where's the national news?

Please don't suggest the corporation should donate to the poor and provide humanitarian aid. That has never been the purpose and mission of the corporation. The purpose and mission of the corporation is to sell intangible religious benefits to its subscribers/members of its main product; the church.

There's a difference between the perceived moral obligation and the actual legal obligation regarding how funds collected from members should be managed.

Of course they might be managing other people's money in that $32B, but the bottom line is this is what happens when you refuse to be transparent.

They expect people to tell them what they make and if their kids are masturbating, but at the end of the day they refuse to provide their members with even the most basic financial transparency.

And this is why - they know if members realize what kinds of insane cash they are sitting on, they will lose that urgency to pay tithing.

They can't be honest about anything else, so why start now?

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 8:54 am I don't see this as a big deal but rather financial and risk management. What should we expect from a corporation that brings in billions of dollars a year in contribution revenue?

What are they supposed to do with all of the money? Stuff like this is awesome to read about and watch the exmo sensationalism explode over it but where's the cover up? Where's the national news?

That's why I think that more digging needs to be done, this is just a good start. For example, I wonder how much stock the church holds in big pharm companies, and that's why they are so against medical cannabis in Utah. Or, how much stock is held in Huntsman/Marriott entities, or Bain Capital, etc. etc., to show how much financial nepotism is truly going on. It's not the dollar value that give me goosebumps, it's the financial picture behind the big numbers. That's why I'll still follow the story, but much more digging has to occur for me to get truly excited about this. I sure hope there's some follow up.

I'll need perspective on this from someone in the biz before I decide anything about ethics.

A back-of-the-envelope justification, for example. Say the church takes in 9 billion in tithing and these LLCs earn it 5% per year. (Quinn says 33 billion, but I've read from knowledgeable people that he's probably overestimating by 300% or so.) Then these LLCs give the church a 1.6 billion buffer, which seems more like rainy day money than hoarding.

Then again, I don't know a lot about finance, so I wait.

Just another brick in the wall. The LDS church has massive assets which are managed as any multi billion dollar corporate conglomerate would.

Don't you remember what happened to the unprofitable servant?

Reuben wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 9:17 am I'll need perspective on this from someone in the biz before I decide anything about ethics.

A back-of-the-envelope justification, for example. Say the church takes in 9 billion in tithing and these LLCs earn it 5% per year. (Quinn says 33 billion, but I've read from knowledgeable people that he's probably overestimating by 300% or so.) Then these LLCs give the church a 1.6 billion buffer, which seems more like rainy day money than hoarding.

Then again, I don't know a lot about finance, so I wait.

I view this as capital management to hedge against inflation and long term value as well as to maintain sustaining capital for future years.

I have a theory that each year as more core tithe paying members leave, the church will have to increase it's financial activities to make up the difference. This suggests that more real estate transactions and investment transactions will happen as tithing donations decrease. Of course this is all speculation.

That makes sense.

A Redditor figures the church brings in 4 billion per year based on inferring the larger portfolio from these holdings:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... nt/dztsga7

And here I was, all worried they couldn't afford to design swell new uniforms to replace the Scout ones...

One more thing: it's not known how much of the 32 billion is owned by the church and how much is just managed by it.

So assume the "worst" case, where the church owns all of the shares. Leaders are probably looking forward and seeing 1) growth turning negative in secularizing countries, and 2) falling global tithing income eventually being overcome by rising global expenses. Those expenses are huge, too: many billions per year for just temple upkeep and the missionary program. Investments like this can make up for the expected shortfall. It's like living off of interest.

IMO, the church learned its lesson on overspending when Moyle's building program plunged it into debt again in the 1960s. It's been very much more corporate since Tanner replaced him, and financially much healthier. I wouldn't begrudge the church a well-managed nest egg or five as it transitions to old age.

Yeah, it could provide more for the poor, and stop building those nearly useless temples, and transform the missionary program into something more service-oriented. But I think it does what it can to survive under the silly obligations and constraints it's accrued over time. Whatever Jesus might do, it acts to survive first, serve second. Just like we all do.

I've decided that the only thing that bothers me so far is the way these LLCs seem to be set up and managed to hide the church's involvement. It could be the church just doesn't want the curtain pulled back, though.

I saw this posted elsewhere and thought I'd put it here. Some people are viewing this as a signal that the church is a good steward of the $ it has and is a well-run corporation. However, the fact that the church has these funds suggests that they're playing/betting the stock market to an extent. If they were concerned only with long-term sustainability then they would be fully indexed in the market, which finance basics and a number of very smart people (Warren Buffet, Eugene Fama, Ken French, etc.) would tell you to do if you're concerned with long-term wealth generation.

But these funds suggest the church is taking some risks in the stock market, which is interesting. Plus they're paying overhead to the fund managers and for the existence of the funds themselves. Otherwise, they could take a less risky path and put all their money in Vanguard or Blackrock and just hope for 8-10% over the next few decades. Basically, this idea is interesting because it shows that the church may taking on unnecessary risk.

However, Jesus could very well be doing the stock picking for them and handing them a list of tickers in their weekly meetings in the temple. If that's the case, then is there anyway I can put my money in these funds?

I guess what bothers me about that is trying to put it into perspective. DW sent me a screen shot that listed out a comparison between the COB, the Vatican and the S. Baptist. If you look at the membership numbers of those faiths there's something that just looks way wrong to me. I don't know if my quick googling reveals the actual numbers, but if you look at how the one true church compares to others...

COB: $32B Assets 16M Members 40M spent on annual humanitarian
Catholics: 7.5B 1.2B 171B
SBC: 20M 15M ?

Compared to individual philanthropist:
Bill Gates $35 billion Healthcare, extreme poverty, education, access to information technology
Warren Buffett $30.7 billion Healthcare, education, AIDS-prevention, sanitation
Li Ka-shing $10.7 billion Education, healthcare
Andrew Carnegie $9.5 billion Libraries, education, peace
Azim Premji $8 billion Education, healthcare

Another facet of this LDS Corp money machine, in terms of what would Jesus do, I think we know how Jesus felt about the money changers at the temple:


Will it be easier for a billionaire TBM to pass through the eye of a needle than the poor divorcee with five kids paying tithing on his/her welfare check?

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 9:39 am

Reuben wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 9:17 am I'll need perspective on this from someone in the biz before I decide anything about ethics.

A back-of-the-envelope justification, for example. Say the church takes in 9 billion in tithing and these LLCs earn it 5% per year. (Quinn says 33 billion, but I've read from knowledgeable people that he's probably overestimating by 300% or so.) Then these LLCs give the church a 1.6 billion buffer, which seems more like rainy day money than hoarding.

Then again, I don't know a lot about finance, so I wait.

I view this as capital management to hedge against inflation and long term value as well as to maintain sustaining capital for future years.

I have a theory that each year as more core tithe paying members leave, the church will have to increase it's financial activities to make up the difference. This suggests that more real estate transactions and investment transactions will happen as tithing donations decrease. Of course this is all speculation.

I suspect with the new tax law, incentives to tithe on gross will plummet.

Reuben wrote: ↑Wed May 30, 2018 5:15 pm One more thing: it's not known how much of the 32 billion is owned by the church and how much is just managed by it.

[snip]

I've decided that the only thing that bothers me so far is the way these LLCs seem to be set up and managed to hide the church's involvement. It could be the church just doesn't want the curtain pulled back, though.

To your first point, it's possible the church could have a wealth management business but they would have to be registered as an investment advisor. None of these 13 LLC's are registered as investment advisors. In fact, there is very little public information on these entities which indicates they were set up as vehicles to invest their own money into the stock market. They are also 100% legal and designed to provide a certain level of anonymity.

The other factor in this is that the listed business managers are practically unknown people with no public history of wealth management. I found one who appears from his linkedin page to work for the church as a budget analyst and was a new stake president in 2011. To me this indicates that they are merely a listed contact person and not making the investment decisions.

It appears that Ensign Peak Advisors is the publicly known entity that deals with investments and such. It's possible that they and their team of experts are making all of the decisions and then funneling funds into these LLC's to provide a level of secrecy and risk management.

Last, we can debate all day long if we think the church should/shouldn't be in the stock market. We can also debate if we think the church should give more to humanitarian aid, however the facts are the facts. The church has a lot of money and will do whatever the hell they want with it.

If you don't like that reality you can always stop paying into their system.

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Thu May 31, 2018 10:29 am
To your first point, it's possible the church could have a wealth management business but they would have to be registered as an investment advisor. None of these 13 LLC's are registered as investment advisors. In fact, there is very little public information on these entities which indicates they were set up as vehicles to invest their own money into the stock market. They are also 100% legal and designed to provide a certain level of anonymity.

If I had to guess, I would bet that these entities are most likely Hedge Funds in that they only work with accredited investors and can thus dodge additional regulatory filings and stipulations that could affect anonymity and investment discretion.

Another thing to consider is that the value of the equity holdings in this Mormon WikiLeaks report is made up of only the "reportable" equity positions. In order for an individual stakeholding (think of a stockholding in Microsoft) to hit a 13F report (and to file a 13F report at all you have to manage at least $100m of 13f securities [i.e., publicly traded stock]), that stakeholding has to constitute either at least 10,000 shares of the common stock outstanding of the company (Microsoft) or at least $20,000 in value. So if these funds are hedged and diversified across the stock market, then likely a lot of the relatively smaller equity holdings won't be included on the 13F report. In other words, the $32.7b is a minimum estimate of their $ invested in public equities.

This whole thing is interesting to me because this form of stock investment suggests "active" management, which is an inherently more risky investment strategy then going long on the whole stock market - in laymen's terms, putting your $ in index funds. Not only is the church taking on more risk but they're also paying more $ in terms of overhead for the individual funds and paying whoever runs them. And if the people running them are doing a decent job, you bet they're getting paid close to what they're worth. No manager who can persistently beat the market (if that's even possible) is going to take a pay cut (to the tune of millions) to go work for the church and only make $100k/year.

Here's one final point of speculation. I think it's a safe assumption to make that the church is fairly conservative in its investment efforts. So it doesn't make sense to me that the $ in these 13 funds appear to be actively managed. However, let's say that the church is prudent in its equity holdings and has indexed the most part of its investment in public stocks. Let's assume the church chooses to actively manage 20-30% of its aggregate equity portfolio.

This would put the range estimate of the church's total equity holdings between $108b and $160b. Given the church's conservative nature, I don't think this is a far stretch. I really can't see them actively managing the majority of their position in the stock market. Too much research and experience shows that's pretty dang risky. Furthermore, the church is well diversified with respect to its entire wealth portfolio.

So let's take it further and assume that the church's investment in public equity constitutes 20-30% of its net worth. The aggregate value of the church then would fall between $540b and $800b. The latter number seems too high though, when comparing Apple and Google's market caps ($919b and $763b, respectively). I wouldn't say the ~$500b estimate is crazy though.

(EDIT below)

*This is all driven by the assumptions that:

• The church owns the 13 funds listed on the report

• All of the money in these funds is the church's and does not include investments of others

• The holdings disclosed on the 13F reports constitute actively managed equity positions

• The church is a conservative investor

I have experience in the 13F world and have spoken with a seminal financial economics researcher who stated that generally no indexed positions appear in 13F reports. So make of that what you will...

This would make sense of them not worrying too much about a 2 Billion dollar investment into City Creek Mall so that the brethren wouldn't have to look at homeless people on their way to work.

RubinHighlander wrote: ↑Thu May 31, 2018 9:37 am Will it be easier for a billionaire TBM to pass through the eye of a needle than the poor divorcee with five kids paying tithing on his/her welfare check?

One only needs to look at the elastic properties of Mitt Romney to realize how easily they can fit through needles.

By Common Consent has a humorous we're-totally-not-laughing-about-this-because-we're-uncomfortable post:

https://bycommonconsent.com/2018/05/31/ ... ed-ranked/

The idea of buying Missouri makes me wonder about the possibility that investments like these are partly meant for buying properties in historical areas that are linked to prophecies.