It's largely hidden right now, but the implosion is coming.
Public pension funds across the U.S. are hiding the size of a crisis that’s been looming for years. Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy.The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year.
The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.
With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion.
That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years -- more than half of them since 1997 -- public records show.
The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
It seems like the bad news just keeps coming.
derivatives
Any idea just how much of this impeding tsunami is due to derivatives?
Harvard (and this is incredible, aren't they one of the top business schools in the country???) is getting huge losses due to credit default swaps.
To go digging further on what precisely is going on with these large institutional pension funds would be one of those "neutron bomb" posts.
As I recall AIG was whispered in the same breath as "retirement funds" but the details, what exactly is going on, did these large institutional funds invest in this Ponzi scheme too, or were they hoodwinked and how exactly these large institutional investors are regulated (are they regulated???) to make sure they are not gambling with retirement funds....
this entire realm, I do not recall a statistic specific, graphed detailed article or even research paper flying by the bitstream.
Global Toilet Needed...
Step #1: We need a Global Financial Institution/Sheriff (akin to a U.N., but a huge Central Bank). #2: We need it to create a common currency, perhaps (eventually, ultimately...?). #3: We need it to 'buy' flushables that are attached to bad boy decisionmaking institutions...to prevent bad psycho-phantom re-emergences of bubble-izing debt-creating innovation-squashers...
What else...? (Add as you wish...);-)
scatonomics?
these analogies are scaring the s**t out of me...;)
I'm not so sure I want a global cop....so far that has resulted in some really bad deals...
this is how the WTO was peddled and instead it destroys national sovereignty and not for the better.
Ask a few sea turtles.
WTO is a Trade Organization
WTO is a Trade Organization without any real bite. Needed now is a Global Central Bank with the power to prevent (via levelizing) some of the regional tsunamis that will inetivably occur. (Soros has long suggested this.)
disagree
The WTO has a lot of bite, that's the whole reason so many want them dissolved. They have authority and ruling and to date on U.S. (of the little filed) complaints the rule against the United States. If the United States was not part of the WTO, they would not have to appeal to them and renegotiate terms directly and deal with violations directly.
Unfunded Liabilities
AIG is but the tip of the problem. CalPers and other public pensions are getting ready to topple. They've relied on excessive, inflated earnings from instruments like MBS's, and are now ripe to fall beneath huge underfunded actuarial weight. There's no way to fund these liabilities, except via phantom IOU's. The unborn children of India and China won't pay these legacy costs of former Colonialists, to be sure.
The Retirement Age will Have to be Up'ed
With Pension Funds over-valued, the American Baby Boomer will not be able to afford to retire. So now we have yet another reason to stop the H-1B visa program!