Forget The Phony Pension Accounting, Here"s How Much Your State Pension Is Really Underfunded

The phony assumptions that go into calculating public pension underfundings in the United States are a frequent topic for us.  As our readers are aware, state pension administrators are given fairly wide leeway to simply pick a discount rate out of thin air.  Of course, since pensions are nothing but a massive stream of future liabilities that stretch out into perpetuity, every 100 bps increase can substantially, and artificially, lower the fund"s reported underfunded level. 

In fact, we estimated the impact of higher discount rates on underfunding levels in a post entitled "An Unsolvable Math Problem: Public Pensions Are Underfunded By As Much As $8 Trillion"...here was the result:

Fortunately, we"re not the only ones that see through the ridiculously phony assumptions that go into duping retirees and taxpayers as the team at American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has just dropped a report which reviews the financial health of public pensions all over the country if you toss out their 7.5% discount rate and replace it with a risk free rate...

Faulty accounting and reporting methods obscure the magnitude of unfunded liabilities. Partly in response to the devastating impact of the Great Recession, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) made two significant changes in 2012 (Statement No. 67, Financial Reporting for Pension Plans and Statement No. 68, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Pensions) to the methods used for measuring the financial health of pension plans. GASB intended these changes to increase transparency, consistency, and comparability of pension information. Public pensions are now required to report their assets and liabilities using a standardized actuarial cost method, to disclose investment returns, and to include unfunded pension liabilities on state balance sheets.

 

Unfortunately, states have found ways to work around these requirements and paint an unrealistically rosy picture of their pension funding status.

 

The Center for State Fiscal Reform at ALEC analyzes the annual official financial documents of more than 280 state-administered pension plans using more realistic investment return assumptions in order to gain a clearer picture of the pension problem. The unfunded liabilities of each pension plan are revalued using a discount rate equal to a risk-free rate of return, best represented by debt instruments issued by the United States government. This year"s study uses a risk-free rate of 2.142 percent, derived from an average of the 10- and 20-year U.S. Treasury bond yields over the course of 12 months spanning April 2016 to March 2017. Based on these revised investment return assumptions, we report on total unfunded pension liability, unfunded pension liabilities per capita, and the funding ratio of these plans.

...and as you might expect, the results are fairly bleak.  In terms on aggregate underfunding, ALEC figures our taxpayer-funded pension ponzis are roughly $6 trillion underfunded, or roughly 2-3x worse that the often-quoted $2-$3 trillion underfunding calculated by state pension administrators.  Meanwhile, using ALEC"s discount rates, the state of California is nearly $1 trillion underfunded by itself.

So, what is your personal share of these massive public liabilities?  Well, if you"re in one of the 10 bottom states it"s anywhere from $25,000 to $45,000.  Of course, that"s the liability for every man, woman and child so the typical American household (with 2.57 residents) in those states is on the hook for $67,500 - $115,650.

Finally, and perhaps most shocking of all, ALEC found that when using a risk-free discount rate only 1 state pension in the entire country was more than 50% funded.

ALEC"s full report can be reviewed here:

This $700 Billion Public Employee Ticking Time Bomb Is Only 6.7% Funded; Most States Are Under 1%

We"ve spent a lot of time of late discussing the inevitable public pension crisis that will eventually wreak havoc on global financial markets.  And while the scale of the public pension underfunding is unprecedented, with estimates ranging from $3 - $8 trillion, there is another taxpayer-funded retirement benefit that has been promised to union workers over the years that puts pensions to shame...at least on a percentage funded basis.

Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB), like pensions, are a stream of future payments that have been promised to retirees primarily to cover healthcare costs.  However, unlike pensions, most government entities don"t even bother to accrue assets for this massive stream of future costs resulting in $700 billion of liabilities that most taxpayer likely didn"t even know existed. 

As a study from Pew Charitable Trusts points out today, the average OPEB plan in the U.S. today is only 6.7% funded (and that"s if you believe their discount rates...so probably figure about half that amount in reality) and many states around the country are even worse.

States paid a total of $20.8 billion in 2015 for non-pension worker retirement benefits, known as other post-employment benefits (OPEB).  Almost all of this money was spent on retiree health care. The aggregate figure for 2015, the most recent year for which complete data are available, represents an increase of $1.2 billion, or 6 percent, over the previous year. The 2015 payments covered the cost of current-year benefits and in some states included funding to address OPEB liabilities. These liabilities—the cost of benefits, in today’s dollars, to be paid in future years—totaled $692 billion in 2015, a 5 percent increase over 2014.

In 2015, states had $46 billion in assets to meet $692 billion in OPEB liabilities, yielding a funded ratio of 6.7 percent. The total amount of assets was slightly higher than the reported $44 billion in 2014, though the funding ratio did not change. The average state OPEB funded ratio is low because most states pay for retiree health care benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis, appropriating revenue annually to pay retiree health care costs for that year rather than pre-funding liabilities by setting aside assets to cover the state’s share of future retiree health benefit costs.

State OPEB funded ratios vary widely, from less than 1 percent in 19 states to 92 percent in Arizona. As Figure 1 shows, only eight have funded ratios over 30 percent. These states typically follow pre-funding policies spelled out in state law. Many of them also make use of the expertise of staff from the state pension system to invest and manage plan assets.

Looking at the problem on a relative basis, you find that several states have accrued net OPEB liabilities totaling in excess of 10% of the personal income generated within their borders.

Pew compared states 2015 OPEB liabilities with 2015 state personal income to show these liabilities in relation to the potential resources that states could draw on to cover the liabilities. The major ratings agencies and other financial research organizations commonly use personal income as a metric to illustrate untapped revenue sources and as an indicator of how flexible states can be in meeting their obligations under changing budget conditions. The research shows significant overall reported OPEB liabilities, but the relative size varies widely. (See Figure 2).

The primary driver for the variation in OPEB liabilities is the difference in how states structure health care benefits for retirees. As a percentage of personal income, the liabilities range from less than 1 percent in 16 states to 16 percent in New Jersey.  Alaska, which has the highest ratio of liabilities to personal income at 42 percent, is a clear outlier among the 50 states because of generous benefit levels that can reach up to 90 percent of premiums for some retired workers. States that provide eligible retirees a monthly contribution equal to a flat percentage of the health insurance coverage premium report the largest liabilities—and could face the greatest fiscal challenges because their costs automatically increase as plan premiums do.

Conversely, those states with fixed-dollar premium subsidies provide a smaller benefit and report lower liabilities. Their exposure to health care cost inflation is also lower, because a fixed-dollar subsidy does not rise with the plan premium.  Lastly, the states that only provide access to a retiree health plan, with no subsidy, have the lowest liabilities as a percentage of personal income.  Although these plans do not make an explicit monthly premium contribution to retirees, many offer retirees a reduced premium through a group rate, which is an implicit subsidy. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the private, independent organization that sets accounting and financial reporting standards for U.S. state and local governments, requires plans to recognize these implicit subsidies in plan financial reporting.

Meanwhile, the cost increases of healthcare premiums seem to massively exceed inflation and/or wage growth year after year.

In contrast, a number of states with higher premium contributions—including California and New Jersey—reported significantly greater liabilities beginning in 2014, reflecting increases in assumed future costs.   California’s plan actuary attributed $7.1 billion of the state’s $7.9 billion liability increase to changing demographic assumptions to account for longer retiree life expectancy in that year.New Jersey’s 2014 hike included a 5 percent increase in liabilities caused by changes in its mortality assumptions and a 9 percent jump linked to changes in health care cost assumptions. For states with the largest year-over-year change in OPEB liabilities, changes in assumptions were the largest driver in increasing costs.

But we"re sure it"s OK, it"s not as if there is a massive wave of baby boomers that are about to retire and ask for these benefits to be paid anytime in the near future...

German 2Y Yields Hit All-Time Lows As ECB Fails To Fix Record Collateral Shortage

When the ECB announced last week that it would expand the universe of eligible collateral for use by Eurozone institutions to include up to €50 billion in cash cash, it - and the market - hoped that the severe collateral shortage manifesting itself in an unprecedented squeeze in the repo market would be alleviated. As a reminder, last Thursday the ECB Governing Council decided that Eurosystem central banks will have the possibility to also accept cash as collateral in their PSPP securities lending (SL) facilities without having to reinvest it in a cash-neutral manner.

The ECB added that "the introduction of cash as collateral in the context of PSPP securities lending is intended to enhance the effectiveness of the SL framework, thereby supporting the smooth implementation of the PSPP as well as the euro area repo market liquidity and functioning. "

Following the news, 2Year Bunds quickly sold off last Thursday, with the yield rising by 6 bps to start, as suddenly it makes more sense to park cash with the ECB than to be penalized by -0.7% to hold German short-term debt.

However, it was not meant to last, and less than a week later, even with overall Eurogroup liquidity hitting new all time highs earlier this week, German 2Y yields fell as much as 2.9bps to all time low of -0.773% as repo pressures continue to support the front-end, Bloomberg reported citing two traders.

The traders added that the €50 billion in securities lending put forward by the ECB are seen as not enough, with structural issues remaining, exacerbated by year-end window dressing.

Additionally, a second trader added that some dealers prefer not to trade with the Bundesbank, due to higher failure fees.

Curiously, while Schatz futures rise to all time high of 112.275, downside continues to be bought in options, says a third trader based in London with a buyer again emerging in Feb. Schatz 112.00/111.90 put spread, 17k trades at 1 tick.

Should the collateral squeeze continue, the ECB may be forced to unveil further intervention mechanisms, as well as additional jawboning by Mario Draghi, potentially before the next scheduled ECB council meeting, especially if the year-end repo shortage drives 2Y yields meaningfully lower.