The First 10 City Pensions That Will Run Out Of Money

The Business Insider ^ | 10/27/10 | Gus Lubin

[FromLori]

The first total municipal pension default happened last week: Prichard, Ala. ran out of money stopped mailing pension checks.

Hundreds of cities could be right behind. Projections by Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh [PDF] show the average city has $15,000 per household in unfunded pension liabilities. These massive liabilities are ignored by common government accounting (see chart).

Insolvency means benefit cuts or borrowing from the already-near-broke states.

Many of the 77 cities surveyed by Novy-Marx and Rauh are facing insolvency within the next decade. Other small cities like Prichard could go even sooner.

[FromLori]

#10 Fort Worth...Unfunded liability: $2 billion Unfunded liability per household: $7,212 Solvency horizon: 2023

#9 Detroit...Unfunded liability: $6.4 billion Unfunded liability per household: $18,643 Solvency horizon: 2023

#8 Baltimore...Unfunded liability: $3.7 billion Unfunded liability per household: $15,420 Solvency horizon: 2022

#7 New York City...Unfunded liability: $122.2 billion Unfunded liability per household: $38,886 Solvency horizon: 2021

#6 Jacksonville...Unfunded liability: $4 billion Unfunded liability per household: $12,994 Solvency horizon: 2020

#5 St. Paul...Unfunded liability: $1.4 billion Unfunded liability per household: $13,686 Solvency horizon: 2020

#4 Cincinnati...Unfunded liability: $2 billion Unfunded liability per household: $15,681 Solvency horizon: 2020

#3 Boston...Unfunded liability: $7.5 billion Unfunded liability per household: $30,901 Solvency horizon: 2019

#2 Chicago...Unfunded liability: $44.8 billion Unfunded liability per household: $41,966 Solvency horizon: 2019

#1 Philadelphia..Unfunded liability: $9 billion Unfunded liability per household: $16,690 Solvency horizon: 2015

[phockthis]

sfl

[ken5050]

The GOP House must stand firm against any attempted new federal bailout...

[Doogle]

Top 25 Most Liberal Cities:

1 Detroit Michigan

2 Gary Indiana

3 Berkeley California

4 Washington, D.C. Dist. of Columbia

5 Oakland California

6 Inglewood California

7 Newark New Jersey

8 Cambridge Massachusetts

9 San Francisco California

10 Flint Michigan

11 Cleveland Ohio

12 Hartford Connecticut

13 Paterson New Jersey

14 Baltimore Maryland

15 New Haven Connecticut

16 Seattle Washington

17 Chicago Illinois

18 Philadelphia Pennsylvania

19 Birmingham Alabama

20 St. Louis Missouri

21 New York New York

22 Providence Rhode Island

23 Minneapolis Minnesota

24 Boston Massachusetts

25 Buffalo New York

[gusopol3]

Wow, that’s a lot of Democrats scattering out from under the property taxes their elected politicians have obligated them to.

[Sgt_Schultze]

From the list I see a pattern of right-wing conservative run cities. How is that possible?

=;-)

[cripplecreek]

I don’t know if I would call Detroit most liberal. Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo both put Detroit to shame in the liberalism department.

Detroit has the most corrupt greedy leadership combined with an apathetic lazy population.

[Doogle]

I didn’t get that list from this site, but........

http://www.epodunk.com/top10/liberal/

[org.whodat]

I,m sure the federal reserve is looking for loop holes that will allow them to produce a Q whatever ______ to give them some green inked paper.

[cougar_mccxxi]

This is a good indication of a government owned by bankers...

Governments 100 years ago either ran a balanced budget, sold government bonds or had a SMALL debt that eventually was repaid.

For the last 45 years we have literally mortgaged our liberty to the bankers. The founders were very blunt about the dangers of domestic and international bankers; I guess it took a few generations to forget and hide what the founders taught.

[rahbert]

You ‘left’ out Santa Cruz CA. and Madison WI.

[nascarnation]

Somehow it just seems perfect that Baraq’s Chicago leads the per capita debt list.

[FromLori]

Agree the Fed has become nothing but Marxist Enablers by monetizing the debt and with the new voting members it appears will we see more of the same.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/12/new-voting-members-of-fomc.html

[Zakeet]

Of course these calculations assume more or less constant levels of employee compensation and a reasonable return on pension funds (i.e. no stock market collapse and default on government bonds) and that the government entities continue their contributions at at least historical levels without taxpayer revolt and that politicians leave all of the pension fund assets untouched.

Historically, in most other countries with similar economic circumstances, few of these events come to pass. Thus government pensions are typically among the first things wiped out by inflation/hyperinflation.

Or putting it another way, the current levels of government largesse are simply unsustainable, and government promises are frequently poorly kept.

[Lurker]

#2 Chicago...Unfunded liability: $44.8 billion Unfunded liability per household: $41,966

Almost 42K per HOUSE. Amazing.

[FromLori]

Yes the Global Bankers not the small American Bankers they are dropping like flies while the large one’s that donated to obama,acorn have experienced no pain.

See this thread

A Ton Of Bailed-Out Banks Are On The Brink Of Collapse

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2647961/posts

[Don Corleone]

#2 Chicago...Unfunded liability: $44.8 billion Unfunded liability per household: $41,966 Solvency horizon: 2019

Considering that close to half of those' households' are on welfare or other forms of assistance that estimate is off by at least a century. Simple truth...Chicago is Bust!

[ViLaLuz]

Wow, Fort Worth.

[Leisler]

If you figure half, or more of the households are personally insovent, bairly existing, in effect, the households that might, just might at the point of a gun, might be able to be raped to pay, so it’s more like $80K per household.

The poor, elderly, one income can not pay, no matter what. Many will flee. Think sweeping fire of debt from home to home.

Anyway, Detroit is the future.

[FromLori]

I was surprised by St. Paul though I know it’s really liberal I had no idea it was that bad I would have expected Minneapolis to be worse.