By Dustin Beilke

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) announced its final 2010 returns this week, the necessary precedent to determining annuitant payments for 2011.

The headline SWIB gave to its news release is "WRS Funds See Strong Finish in 2010." Many newspapers ran articles with headlines similar to the SWIB news release headline, but some, including the Wisconsin State Journal, chose to put it this way: "Many State Retirees to See Dip in Pension Checks." Neither headline is wrong, but all of the headline writers are engaged in a sort of spin. SWIB wants to put its fund's performance in the best possible light. Some newspaper headline writers think readers only want to hear bad news and work hard to find the bad news in any story in order to give readers what they think they want.

Here are the facts: the core fund gained 12.3 percent in 2010 and the variable fund gained 15.6 percent. Both funds outpaced their benchmarks and out-performed the market in general. If you are in the core fund only your checks will decrease between 1.5 percent and 1 percent in 2011, as part of the "smoothing" effect that was triggered during the stock market crash of 2008, when the fund lost almost 40 percent of its value. If you are in the variable fund your checks will be 7 percent to 11 percent higher in 2011.

All of this and much more is explained on the SWIB website.