Pandemic of pension woes is plaguing the nation

nbcnews.com ^ | Auguust 5, 2013 | John W. Schoen

[John W]

Detroit, you're not alone.

Across the nation, cities and states are watching Detroit's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy filing with fear. Years of underfunded retirement promises to public sector workers, which helped lay Detroit low, could plunge them into a similar financial hole.

A CNBC.com analysis of more than 120 of the nation's largest state and local pension plans finds they face a wide range of financial burdens as aging work forces near retirement.

Thanks to a patchwork of accounting practices and rosy investment assumptions, it's not even clear just how big a financial hole many states and cities have dug for themselves. That may soon change, thanks to a new set of government accounting standards that could serve as a nasty wake-up call to states and cities relying on rosy scenarios and head-in-the-sand accounting.

Even less clear is who will pay to clean up the messes. Will it be the millions of retirees owed trillions of dollars in benefits, the bondholders who lent states and cities trillions more, or local taxpayers who may have to pay more to cover the shortfalls or see deeper cuts in public services?

Regardless, the painful process will likely play out for years.

[Graybeard58]

And Dave Ramsey claims it’s easy to get 10%.

And Suze Orman says municipal bonds are a good investment.

[DuncanWaring]

And Rudyard Kipling repeated:

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

[Lou L]

And Dave Ramsey claims it’s easy to get 10%.

I'd like to know his secret. Most people can't do that year in, year out.

[Blue Ink]

““Our members were promised certain things,” said Tom Ryan, president of the firefighters’ union in Chicago”

Yeah, well, you say “promise,” I say “extortion” and “bribery.”

Your union showers select politicians’ reelection campaigns with union money bribes. When the pols win their offices, they dutifully gift you back with MY money.

The extortion comes in when you stage strikes that threaten public safety, strikes that were, in more sane times, patently illegal.

My fervent wish is that my own city, Los Angeles, takes a page out of Detroit’s book and declares bankruptcy. And voids every single one of those stinking public employee union pension contracts.

[DuncanWaring]

I’d like to know it, too.

So would a lot of professional pension-fund managers.

[DuncanWaring]

Your union showers select politicians’ reelection campaigns with union money bribes. When the pols win their offices, they dutifully gift you back with MY money.

And there you have the economic food-chain:

Taxpayer money goes to fund government-employee paychecks.

Government-employee paychecks fund union dues.

Union dues fund Democrat politician reelection campaigns.

Democrat politicians harvest taxpayer paychecks to fund government employees.

And on it goes.

Until it doesn't.

[DuncanWaring]

If you do happen to find an investment that pays 10%, that’s because it’s got a 9.5% chance of going bankrupt.

[hal ogen]

My uber-LIB, always right sister-in-law retired from “teaching” in Michigan when she was in her early 50’s. She’s always smug and condescending. It would be so sad to see her pension dry-up because of funding problems...so sad.