McClatchy Watch has posted a rather peeved response from McClatchy corporate on that cryptic $77m. loss to MNI’s pension fund. In it the company both confirms that it assumes MNI will recover a portion of its original investment with Westridge Capital Management and attacks McClatchy Watch and Meck Deck for raising questions about its disclosure of the loss.

“Various websites are reporting information about a McClatchy Company Retirement Plan investment that suffered losses as a result of a Wall Street scandal involving Westridge Capital Management. These posts suggest that the loss has somehow imperiled our pension plan,” the release begins.

Nothing we said suggested anything of kind. McClatchy Watch’s posts did not either. What is left then is anonymous posts on the Yahoo! stock board, an utterly absurd thing for any company to pay attention to — yet MNI evidently does. Or does not mind lying about the tone and tenor of accurate commentary on its corporate governance.

What we did say was that it would be unsound for MNI to assume that its is going to recover any of the money it placed with Westridge. And what do you know, today McClatchy swears it will recover about half of the $64m. it inherited from Knight Ridder that was supposedly invested with Westridge. The $64m. supposedly “grew” to $77m. under Westridge’s management, but how would anyone know?

It is standard operating procedure for pension plans to use this 50% recovery figure in such fraud cases. And it might happen. Years from now, which further devalues any recovery. But given the size and scope of the Westridge fraud, it seems silly to assume any recovery — especially if the investment represents such a small part of the “nearly $1 billion” in assets MNI claims is under investment.

One more thing. The MNI release ho-hums that “the anticipated loss and our expected recovery were previously and appropriately accounted for and publicly disclosed earlier this year.” Really? Can anyone out there in Sacramento reading this please send me any link from any MNI newspaper story on this matter?

Update: Well. One day after those wacky web reports, comes this Sac Bee headline McClatchy pension to lose $32 million in investment scheme. I still say the loss will be closer to the full $64m. MNI had at risk, but good to see that someone caught up with the story about an hour ago in Sacro.

Update II: The UPoR caught up to the story late yesterday afternoon, posting the Sac Bee account.