> So the politicians wanted to have their cake and eat it, no I get that perfectly.
That's how capitalism works (under ideal conditions). Everyone tries to make the best possible deal for themselves, not just politicians.
> For that matter, why is the city in the business of trying to make a profit out of peoples' pensions?
For a multitude of possible reasons. Because the profit there can be used to reduce the tax rates. Because the profit can be used to pay for something that the city couldn't otherwise afford. Because the benefits plan allows them to more accurately plan future liabilities (compared to paying employees a market rate salary (that's not otherwise lowered by a pension) that floats up and down with inflation and the economy).
> And even then there was no accountability or repercussions for politicians that decided to dip their fingers into the pension investment pools.
Are you talking about embezzlement or about the city borrowing money from the pension fund? The first is illegal and an enforcement problem that's pretty unrelated to where the money was embezzled from. The second may or may not actually be a problem depending on the terms at which the city borrows the money. Regardless, that's also not related to pensions specifically, since the city can borrow money at stupid terms from anyone, not just the pension fund.
> I think the reason why most people are shocked at this article, is because they've been conditioned and drilled with the thought that public servants are under-paid.
That's because the public workers actually were underpaid compared to private industry workers when the deals were originally negotiated (even including the expected value of the pension). Over the years since then, private corporations have lowered the salaries they pay (usually by not keeping up with inflation as opposed to actual pay cuts, though that happens, too) most of their workers, so public sector jobs have become much more competitive.
> If [the public servants did this on "purpose" as a risk-mitigating process]'s the case, then they need to stop yapping incessantly in the public sphere about how they're paid less in comparison to their private counterparts.
I have a few problems with many of the implicit assumptions in this statement; specifically that there is an agreed upon way to value a pension, that there is an agreed upon way to value the value of the risk-mitigation of a pension plan, that there is little variation in the ratio of the total compensation public workers earn to a market rate salary across all government workers, that all government workers are yapping incessantly about being paid less than market rate when using total compensation instead of just salary (combined with the previous assumption: as opposed to just the ones that are currently underpaid), and that only the workers are benefiting (or that they benefit much more than the city) from such a deal.
On a side note, it's disappointing to see people want to drag the public sector workers down to a their (possibly only just perceived) lower level instead of wanting to drag themselves up to the public sector workers' level.