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The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued preliminary reforms on Wednesday that would balloon the already massive unfunded liabilities of public pensions. But in anticipation of an outcry from budgeters and public employee unions, GASB, which sets accounting standards for state and local governments, made clear that it is only a scorekeeper, not a referee. GASB emphasized that its reforms would only apply to the financial reporting of pension liabilities, not to the way governments go about funding — or, more accurately, underfunding — their pension plans.

The U.S. Treasury recently released its “2008 Financial Report of the United States Government.” In case you had any doubts, our government’s finances are in a terrible mess. According to the report, under generally accepted accounting principles (the ones that private businesses are required by law to use), Uncle Sam’s total financial liabilities—explicit debts and unfunded obligations—exceed $65 trillion. That’s five times as large as our national GDP—a GDP, by the way, that happens to be shrinking at an alarming rate. I don’t know about you, but I find those incomprehensibly large numbers disorienting. I feel like Alice when she...

The idea that a district attorney cannot be sued is one of those theories which, in real life, can only be stretched so far. Much of what I read indicates that not only is Mike Nifong way beyond the breaking point on that one, but that the city of Durham NC itself and Duke University itself are facing major kinds of legal liabilities in the lacrosse case. An article on Lew Rockwell's site spells out the liabilities which president Brodhead and other members of the administration and faculty of Duke face. As that article notes, Duke has legal liabilities which...

This is the pension squeeze companies aren't talking about: Even as many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers -- complaining of the costs -- their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions, causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon. Companies disclose little about any of this. But a Wall Street Journal analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's pensions. Among the findings: • Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies. Besides GM, they include General...

Warnings of a financial crisis in the nation's worker pensions system are overstated, an industry group said Friday as Congress prepared legislation to overhaul the system to protect future retirees' benefits. The liabilities of the federal agency that guarantees worker pensions, estimated at $23.3 billion at the end of 2004, are inflated by excessively low interest rate assumptions and overly conservative investment strategies, according to a report prepared for the American Benefits Council, which represents companies with defined benefit pension plans. There's no dispute that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has inherited large liabilities in recent years and a change...

Debt Trouble Could Be Piling Up Overseas By EDMUND L. ANDREWS WASHINGTON FOR the world's poorer countries, this year has been remarkably free from financial meltdowns. Argentina, having had one-fifth of its economy evaporate in 2001, is mending fences with international creditors and slowly putting itself back together. In Brazil, where investors seemed close to a panic last year, exports are surging and the currency remains stable. The Asian and Russian meltdowns of five years ago seem like distant memories. But watch out. In a report that will be published this week, the International Monetary Fund warns that some Asian...

<p>NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Many economists worry that the U.S. federal budget deficit could approach a record $500 billion this year.</p> <p>Few, however, have grasped that the fiscal problems facing the United States could make an itty bitty $500 billion deficit look like pocket change.</p>