$1.2 Trillion Asset Manager: Forget Volatility, The Real Financial Timebomb Is Public Pensions

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

As we have reported over and over and over (and over, and over), public pensions are in deep, deep trouble.

In addition critical funding shortfalls (U.S. public pensions had just 71.8% of assets required to meet obligations as of June 2016), many of the country’s largest pensions have completely unrealistic target rates-of-return of 7% on average.

(Millman 2017 Public Pension Funding Study)

And while interest rates and therefore the cost of leverage has been at historic lows, and markets at historic highs (until they underwent a brief Vol-fib cardiac arrest last week), the question is what happens when the music stops, liquidity dries up, and economic contraction besets (or catch up to) the markets?

David Hunt, CEO of $1.2 trillion asset manager PGIM, is asking this exact question.

“If you were going to look for what’s the possible real crack in the financial architecture for the next crisis, rather than looking in the rearview mirror, pension funds would be on our list,” Hunt said in a Friday interview with Bloomberg, discussing what municipalities and states will do when local tax revenues decline and unemployment worsens. “So we’re worried about those pension obligations.”

PGIM, owned by New Jersey-based Prudential Financial, advises 147 of the 300 largest pension funds around the world. Hunt joined Prudential in 2011 after leaving McKinsey & Co., where he doubled assets under management, renamed the business PGIM, and bought a Deutsche Bank AG unit to expand in India.

In other words, he knows the business like the back of his hand.

Hunt said that corporate retirement funds typically outperform their public counterparts. To that end, one of the most difficult aspects of managing money for public plans, says Hunt, is the fact that lawmakers are promising unrealistic goals to retirees. As such, he has advised public-pension clients to stop seeking the highest returns, and “start doing what the corporate folks have long been doing, which is to find ways to minimize the deficit and to take risk gradually off the table.”

Of course, that will never happen, and instead pensions will soon be begging Credit Suisse to recreate the XIV just so they can go long.

The PGIM CEO also sees a shift in equities markets as fewer firms pursue IPO funding – instead opting for private equity. as Bloomberg notes, the number of publicly traded U.S. companies shrank from over 8,000 in 1996 to around 4,300 in 2016, according to Ernst & Young.

“More than any other period in our history we’re going to have companies that are owned by private equity rather than the public equity markets,” Hunt said. “The dynamism and growth of the economy is now more and more being captured privately and by institutions rather than actually available for you to own in your 401(k) account or for other public markets.”

One could almost say that as central banks nationalize the markets, leading to idiotic valuations, it is a handful of private capital holders who end up with all the gains. As for everyone else… well, you have all those “fully-funded”, non-timebomby pensions to look forward to.

The Great Retirement Con

This report was originally published by Adam Taggart at PeakProsperity

The Origins Of The Retirement Plan

Back during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress promised a monthly lifetime income to soldiers who fought and survived the conflict. This guaranteed income stream, called a “pension”, was again offered to soldiers in the Civil War and every American war since.

Since then, similar pension promises funded from public coffers expanded to cover retirees from other branches of government. States and cities followed suit — extending pensions to all sorts of municipal workers ranging from policemen to politicians, teachers to trash collectors.

A pension is what’s referred to as a defined benefit plan. The payout promised a worker upon retirement is guaranteed up front according to a formula, typically dependent on salary size and years of employment.

Understandably, workers appreciated the security and dependability offered by pensions. So, as a means to attract skilled talent, the private sector started offering them, too.

The first corporate pension was offered by the American Express Company in 1875. By the 1960s, half of all employees in the private sector were covered by a pension plan.

Off-loading Of Retirement Risk By Corporations

Once pensions had become commonplace, they were much less effective as an incentive to lure top talent. They started to feel like burdensome cost centers to companies.

As America’s corporations grew and their veteran employees started hitting retirement age, the amount of funding required to meet current and future pension funding obligations became huge. And it kept growing. Remember, the Baby Boomer generation, the largest ever by far in US history, was just entering the workforce by the 1960s.

Companies were eager to get this expanding liability off of their backs. And the more poorly-capitalized firms started defaulting on their pensions, stiffing those who had loyally worked for them.

So, it’s little surprise that the 1970s and ’80s saw the introduction of personal retirement savings plans. The Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) was formed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. And the first 401k plan was created in 1980.

These savings vehicles are defined contribution plans. The future payout of the plan is variable (i.e., unknown today), and will be largely a function of how much of their income the worker directs into the fund over their career, as well as the market return on the fund’s investments.

Touted as a revolutionary improvement for the worker, these plans promised to give the individual power over his/her own financial destiny. No longer would it be dictated by their employer.

Your company doesn’t offer a pension? No worries: open an IRA and create your own personal pension fund.

Afraid your employer might mismanage your pension fund? A 401k removes that risk. You decide how your retirement money is invested.

Want to retire sooner? Just increase the percent of your annual income contributions.

All this sounded pretty good to workers. But it sounded GREAT to their employers.

Why? Because it transferred the burden of retirement funding away from the company and onto its employees. It allowed for the removal of a massive and fast-growing liability off of the corporate balance sheet, and materially improved the outlook for future earnings and cash flow.

As you would expect given this, corporate America moved swiftly over the next several decades to cap pension participation and transition to defined contribution plans.

The table below shows how vigorously pensions (green) have disappeared since the introduction of IRAs and 401ks (red):

(Source)

So, to recap: 40 years ago, a grand experiment was embarked upon. One that promised US workers: Using these new defined contribution vehicles, you’ll be better off when you reach retirement age.

Which raises a simple but very important question: How have things worked out?

The Ugly Aftermath

America The Broke

Well, things haven’t worked out too well.

Three decades later, what we’re realizing is that this shift from dedicated-contribution pension plans to voluntary private savings was a grand experiment with no assurances. Corporations definitely benefited, as they could redeploy capital to expansion or bottom line profits. But employees? The data certainly seems to show that the experiment did not take human nature into account enough – specifically, the fact that just because people have the option to save money for later use doesn’t mean that they actually will.

First off, not every American worker (by far) is offered a 401k or similar retirement plan through work. But of those that are, 21% choose not to participate (source).

As a result, 1 in 4 of those aged 45-64 and 22% of those 65+ have $0 in retirement savings (source). Forty-nine percent of American adults of all ages aren’t saving anything for retirement.

In 2016, the Economic Policy Institute published an excellent chartbook titled The State Of American Retirement (for those inclined to review the full set of charts on their website, it’s well worth the time). The EPI’s main conclusion from their analysis is that the switchover of the US workforce from defined-benefit pension plans to self-directed retirement savings vehicles (e..g, 401Ks and IRAs) has resulted in a sizeable drop in retirement preparedness. Retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with our aging population.

The stats illustrated by the EPI’s charts are frightening on a mean, or average, level. For instance, for all workers 32-61, the average amount saved for retirement is less than $100,000. That’s not much to live on in the last decades of your twilight years. And that average savings is actually lower than it was back in 2007, showing that households have still yet to fully recover the wealth lost during the Great Recession.

But mean numbers are skewed by the outliers. In this case, the multi-$million households are bringing up the average pretty dramatically, making things look better than they really are. It’s when we look at the median figures that things get truly scary:

Nearly half of families have no retirement account savings at all. That makes median (50th percentile) values low for all age groups, ranging from $480 for families in their mid-30s to $17,000 for families approaching retirement in 2013. For most age groups, median account balances in 2013 were less than half their pre-recession peak and lower than at the start of the new millennium. (Source)

The 50th percentile household aged 56-61 has only $17,000 to retire on. That’s dangerously close to the Federal poverty level income for a family of two for just a single year.

Most planners advise saving enough before retirement to maintain annual living expenses at about 70-80% of what they were during one’s income-earning years. Medicare out-of-pocket costs alone are expected to be between $240,000 and $430,000 over retirement for a 65-year-old couple retiring today.

The gap between retirement savings and living costs in one’s later years is pretty staggering:

• Nearly 83% of retired households have less saved than Medicare costs alone will consume.


• One-third of retired households are entirely dependent on Social Security. On average, that’s only $1,230 per month – a hard income to live on. (source)


• 34 percent of older Americans depend on credit cards to pay for basic living expenses such as mortgage payments, groceries, and utilities. (source)

As for Medicare, the out-of-pocket costs could easily soar over retirement. The Wall Street Journal reports that the current estimate of Medicare’s unfunded liability now tops $42 Trillion. Such a mind-boggling gap makes it highly likely that current retirees will not receive all of the entitlements they are being promised.

And the denial being shown by baby boomers entering retirement is frightening. Many simply plan to work longer before retiring, with a growing percentage saying they plan to work “forever”.

But the data shows that declining health gives older Americans no choice but to leave the work force eventually, whether they want to or not. Years of surveys by the Employment Benefit Research Institute show that fully half of current retirees had to leave the work force sooner than desired due to health problems, disability, or layoffs.

Add to this the nefarious impact of the Federal Reserve’s prolonged 0% interest rate policy, which has made it extremely hard for retirees with fixed-income investments to generate a meaningful income from them.

The number of Americans aged 65 years and older is projected to more than double in the next 40 years:

Will the remaining body of active workers be able to support this tsunami of underfunded seniors? Don’t bet on it.

Especially since their retirement savings prospects are even more dim. With long-stagnant real wages and punishing price inflation in the cost of living, Generation X and Millennials are hard-pressed to put money away for their twilight years:

(Source)

Public Pensions: Broken Promises

And for those “lucky” folks expecting to enjoy a public pension, there’s a lot of uncertainty as to whether they’re going to receive all they’ve been promised.

Due to underfunded contributions, years of portfolio under-performance due to the Federal Reserve’s 0% interest rate policy, poor fund management, and other reasons, many of the federal and state pensions are woefully under-captialized. The below chart from former Dallas Fed advisor Danielle DiMartino-Booth shows how the total sum of unfunded public pension obligations exploded from $292 billion in 2007 to $1.9 trillion by the end of 2016:

(Source)

And the daily headlines of failing state and local pension funds (Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey, Dallas, Providence — to name but a few) show that the problem is metastasizing across the nation at an accelerating rate.

Affording Your Future

The bottom line when it comes to retirement is that you’re on your own. The vehicles and the promises you’ve been given are proving woefully insufficient to fund the “retirement” dream you’ve been sold your whole life.

That’s the bad news.

But the good news is that the dream is still attainable. There are strategies and behaviors that, if adopted now, will make it much more likely for you to be able to afford to retire — and in a way you can enjoy.

In Part 2: Success Strategies For Retirement, we detail out these best practices for a solvent retirement, including providing 14 specific action steps you can start taking right now in your life that will materially improve your odds of enjoying your later years with grace.

For far too many Americans, “retirement” will remain a perpetual myth. Don’t let that happen to you.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

The Ponzi Scheme That"s Over 100x The Size Of Madoff

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

By January 1920, much of Europe was in total chaos following the end of the first World War.

Unemployment soared and steep inflation was setting in across Spain, Italy, Germany, etc.

But an Italian-American businessman who was living in Boston noticed a unique opportunity amid all of that devastation.

He realized that he could buy pre-paid international postage coupons in Europe at dirt-cheap prices, and then resell them in the United States at a hefty profit.

After pitching the idea to a few investors, he raised a total of $1,800 and formed a new company that month– the Securities Exchange Company.

Early investors were rewarded handsomely; within a month they had already received a large return on investment.

Word began to spread, and soon money came pouring in from dozens, then hundreds of other investors.

By the summer of 1920, the company’s founder was receiving more than $1 million per day from investors.

His name was Charles Ponzi. And as you could guess, it was a total scam.

Ponzi wasn’t really generating any investment returns. He was simply taking the new investors’ money to pay the old investors.

The business collapsed later that year, giving rise to the term “Ponzi Scheme”.

The most famous Ponzi Scheme in recent history was the case of Bernie Madoff, whose scam robbed investors of $65 billion.

But today there’s another major Ponzi Scheme that’s literally 100x the size of Bernie Madoff’s.

I’m talking about pension funds.

Pensions are the giant funds responsible for paying out retirement benefits to workers.

And if you think calling them a “Ponzi Scheme” is sensational, it’s not.

Pension funds (including Social Security) literally make payments to their beneficiaries with money contributed by people in the work force.

In other words, the money that people pay in to the pension fund is paid out to the people receiving benefits.

In theory this could go on indefinitely as long as

a) there’s a sufficient ratio of workers paying into the system vs. retirees receiving benefits; and

 

b) the pension funds are receiving an adequate return on investment

When one (or both) of these conditions is not being met, the pension is considered to be “underfunded,” and it starts burning through its cash balance.

Eventually it will burn through all of the fund’s assets until there’s nothing left. Poof.

Credit-rating agency Moody’s estimates state, federal and local government pensions are $7 trillion short in funding.

And corporate pension funds are underfunded by $375 billion.

One of the big drivers behind this is that investment returns are way too low.

Pension funds need to invest in safe, stable assets (like government bonds), but have to achieve yields of around 7% per year in order to stay solvent.

But today with government bonds yielding 3% or less (and in some cases bond yields are NEGATIVE), they aren’t achieving their targets.

One or two years with sub-optimal investment returns is not catastrophic.

But it’s been like this now for a decade.

And that’s just problem #1.

Problem #2 is that the ratio between workers and retirees is moving in the wrong direction.

As an example, despite all the hoop-lah about the unemployment rate falling in the Land of the Free, the number of retirees receiving Social Security is rising MUCH more rapidly.

Ten years ago in November 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated that 146 million Americans were working.

Today that figure is 153 million, a 4.8% increase over the past decade.

Social Security, on the other hand, was paying benefits to 34.4 million Americans in November 2007, versus 44.2 million today– a 28.5% increase.

These are government statistics– and the numbers clearly show a terrible trend: there aren’t enough workers to pay for retirees.

The problems persists across state and local pensions as well.

The State of Kentucky’s Teachers’ Retirement System, for example, saw a 64% increase in retirees just in the last twelve months.

Unsurprisingly Kentucky’s retirement system is massively underfunded.

It’s so bad that Governor Matt Bevin is publicly attacking teachers who retire early (early retirement means that someone is taking benefits sooner and paying less into the pension fund).

Bottom line– this trend is real:

– Pension funds are earning a lower investment return than they require

 

– The ratio of people paying in to the fund vs. people receiving benefits is moving in the WRONG direction.

This is how Ponzi schemes invariably unravel.

Again, I’m not trying to be sensational. These are facts.

And given that just about everyone at some point probably plans on retiring, it’s important to be able to have an objective, data-driven conversation about the topic.

I know it’s uncomfortable. We want to believe so badly that the system is going to work.

I also want to be the starting Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys. But that’s probably not going to happen either.

Retirement is a BIG component of a Plan B– which is fundamentally about taking sound, sensible steps to be in control of your own fate.

And there ARE plenty of options.

For example, you can look into a self-directed SEP IRA or Solo(k), which both allow you to contribute 10x more each year for retirement than a conventional structure.

Plus these structures allow you greater flexibility in where you can invest your retirement savings– real estate, lucrative private businesses, even cryptocurrency.

Just ONE great investment through a more flexible structure can make an enormous difference to your retirement.

And even if the Ponzi pension crisis somehow miraculously rights itself, you certainly won’t be worse off having your own independent nest egg.

It just makes sense… no matter what happens (or doesn’t happen) next.

Do you have a Plan B?

Will Americans Die Young Enough To Save Pension Plans?

Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

“Pension fund problems worsen in 43 states” says the Bloomberg headline.

Laurie Meisler writes,

New Jersey, Kentucky and Illinois continue to lose ground and now have only about one third of the money they need to pay retirement benefits. And three states had double-digit declines in their pension funding ratios in the past year: Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota - though some of this can be attributed to actuarial changes in the way pension liabilities are calculated.

Nevada PERs is thinking about making a change, from assuming 8% investment returns to 7.5%. The higher the assumed rate, the less future beneficiaries have to contribute.  And, ultimately, Sean Whaley writes for the LVRJ,

The assumptions are used to ensure the solvency of the plan over the long term for the approximately 105,000 active members and 54,000 retired and disabled members. Because the public retirement plan is a defined benefit plan where retirees get a fixed monthly pension, taxpayers are ultimately responsible for its fiscal health.

Nevada PERS Executive Officer Tina Leiss said NvPERs funding ratio of 74.1 could drop if the returns assumption is lowered.

The good news (or maybe it"s bad news) is “Americans are retiring later, dying sooner, and sicker in-between” says Bloomberg. Ben Steverman writes,

Data released last week, reports Bloomberg,  suggest Americans’ health is declining and millions of middle-age workers face the prospect of shorter, and less active, retirements than their parents enjoyed.

The mortality rate increased 1.2% from 2014 to 2015, the first time its increased since 2005 and the first time it"s jumped over 1% since 1980.

Full social security benefits don’t kick in until a person is 66+ now, so,

“Almost one in three Americans age 65 to 69 is still working, along with almost one in five in their early 70s.”

That sounds okay, except, University of Michigan economists HwaJung Choi and Robert Schoeni have studied middle-aged folks and found,

“the number of middle-age Americans with ADL (activity of daily living) limitations has jumped: 12.5 percent of Americans at the current retirement age of 66 had an ADL limitation in their late 50s, up from 8.8 percent for people with a retirement age of 65.”

Then you might say, well, I might not be able to get around, but at least my mind is sharp. Except, “Cognitive skills have also declined over time. For those with a retirement age of 66, 11 percent already had some kind of dementia or other cognitive decline at age 58 to 60, according to the study. That’s up from 9.5 percent of Americans just a few years older, with a retirement age between 65 and 66.”

Maybe that’s why people are either killing themselves quickly - suicide - or slowly with alcohol, drugs, or overeating.  

This is all good news for pension plans...

As life expectancy drops - The Society of Actuaries says a 65-year-old man can expect to live to 85.6 years, and a woman can expect to make it to 87.6.

So - the group calculates a typical pension plan’s obligations could fall by 0.7 percent to 1 percent.

That"s a start but it won’t do much good, in New Jersey, Kentucky and Illinois.

*  *  *

Simply put, we"re gonna need a bigger die-off - or perhaps a few more years of unhealthy living will start to really help.

What Kentucky’s Retirement Rush Says About The Future of State Pensions

Via The Daily Bell

Just because a Ponzi scheme is run by a government doesn’t mean it won’t collapse.

The situation in Kentucky serves as a dire warning about larger pension systems including Social Security.

What Kentucky is currently facing in like a bank run. When people hear that a bank is failing, they all scramble to get their money out before it goes bust. This snowballs and the bank runs out of cash that much quicker.

Kentuckians are retiring in droves, hoping to get a piece of the pension funds they were promised. Worried that the money might not be there in a few years, they are opting to start collecting now, lest they get nothing. But this is causing a run-on-the-bank effect. The pension system is collapsing that much quicker.

Politicians have long kicked the can down the road. The idea is that there will always be a future generation, unborn children to pay for the promises they make today. There will always be new suckers to pay for their unfunded liabilities.

But the bubble bursts. Unless a population grows exponentially, this cannot work. That is why it is a Ponzi scheme. There’s always a bottom layer that holds up the rest of the pyramid.

Of course, the government of Kentucky has assured potential retirees that they don’t need to panic. The state claims that even if the legislation passes to fix the problem, government employees will have time to retire on the old plans if they choose.

But that hasn’t seemed to ease the high retirement numbers. In past months, between 24-64% more people have retired (depending on the sector) compared to 2016. And with officials floating the idea of raising the retirement age, many have a better safe than sorry attitude.

This also shows that people don’t trust the government assurances. And of course, they shouldn’t. After all, the government also told them not to worry, the pensions they promised were funded. After a history of governments at all levels reneging on their promises, it is better to take the money and run.

And it’s the same old story for how they got into the mess. Spend now, worry about funding it later. There’s never enough money for the government, have you ever noticed that? Companies balance their sheets or go bust. Governments keep chugging along despite breaking promises, overspending, and failing to plan.

PFM mostly blames the approach used to fund the systems, one used by most public pension plans across the country, which based the government’s contributions to the plans on a percentage of a growing payroll. It says that’s like a homeowner basing mortgage payments on a percentage of future income he expects, or hopes, will grow.

Translation: it was a Ponzi scheme. And that same scheme is used by most government retirement plans. The money in these accounts is reinvested. But you don’t control where they are putting the money. Turns out Kentucky made some bad decisions on placing retirement money in certain hedge funds that didn’t do so hot after the 2008 recession.

Also, in the 1990s when the pension plans were fully funded, the General Assembly approved benefit increases without funding them — including an expensive cost of living benefit increase for Kentucky Retirement System members in place between 1996 and 2012.

The bottom line is that you never want to be dependent on the government, or even a private company for your pension. The only way to truly safeguard your retirement is to take it into your own hands.

Maybe some of your retirement goes into a hedge fund, but certainly not all of it. But a better plan is to do the research for what kinds of stocks and investments make sense. Spread the risk across different sectors, and maybe even different country’s stock markets. If you can’t do the research for proper investments, at least do the research to find out who the best person or organization is to inform you.

Your plan may be in part a company pension or retirement plan. But it should not stop there. It is always better to diversify savings (foreign accounts, cash, precious metals) and diversify investments (property, foreign and domestic stocks). Then you can also spend what you can afford to lose on riskier, but potentially high yielding, speculations (cryptocurrency, startups).

But you know the old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. With their track record, it’s time to stop putting trust in government to take care of your finances.

Kentucky Teachers "Outraged" At Thought Of Accepting Same Retirement Plans As Private Sector Workers

Last week we noted that, after months of planning and cogitating over how to address the failing public pension systems in their state which are somewhere between $40 and $80 billion under water, Kentucky"s Governor Matt Bevin and the leaders of the General Assembly’s Republican majorities released their highly-anticipated "plan" which turned out to be nothing more than the same old "kick the can down the road" approach to "pension reform" that has perpetuated the pension ponzi in this country for decades while doing absolutely nothing to address the actual crisis.

Here is a summary of the "plan" courtesy of the Courier-Journal...notice that aside from putting new teachers into a "401(k)-style" defined contribution plan, the Republican proposal does pretty much nothing else except demand that more taxpayer dollars be diverted to service failing pension plans.

 

Here are highlights of the multi-point proposal:

• There is no increase in the full retirement age for current workers

• There will be no reductions in pension checks for retirees, and it protects health care benefits for them.

• Future non-hazardous employees and teachers will be required to enroll in 401(k)-style plans.

• Hazardous duty employees, such as police officers and firefighters, will continue in the same system they are in now.

• The plan would close a loophole to ensure payment of death benefits to families of hazardous employees.

• The plan would stop the defined benefits plans for all legislators, moving them into the same plan as other state employees under the jurisdiction of Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Of course, you can imagine our "surprise" when we learned that Kentucky teachers are apparently outraged that they might be "forced" to live with the cruel and unusual punishment of having to accept the same 401(k)-style retirement plans as pretty much every other private-sector employee in the country...the horror!

In an op-ed published in the Lexington Herald Leader this morning, a trio of public school administrators blasted the notion that they would be required to bear some responsibility for managing their own retirement plans rather than simply sticking their hand out for more taxpayer funded gifts when their public pension ponzis run low on funds.

However, we are seriously concerned that proposals in the current framework would increase the cost of the system, increase financial burdens on our local communities, decrease retirement security for our teachers and staff while moving absolutely all risk to them, and, most troubling, increase the unconscionable student resource inequities among classrooms across the state. It would decrease benefits for retirees, current staff and future hires, and increase revenue only from our employees themselves and from our local communities. We fear it would result in damage to public education on which families depend.

 

The proposed framework would create a defined-contribution plan with no amount of protected benefit whatsoever, which would be expensive in the near-term from a contribution standpoint and could leave employees with absolutely no savings or retirement income if another recession occurred as they neared retirement. This lack of financial security, which virtually no private or public sector employee faces, will decimate staff recruitment; students will suffer from increased class sizes and lack of specialized educators. It is difficult to imagine many of our finest young people choosing to enter a field of work that presented such risks.

 

An essential way to evaluate any reform is for each of us to ask ourselves this: Under the proposed plan, would we proudly encourage our own daughters and sons to earn college degrees and enter the education professions? Or, would we instead tell our own kids that serving their fellow Kentuckians by teaching children to read and write won’t provide a safe, secure future, and urge them to consider other options?

The problem, as we"ve noted numerous times before, is that the aggregate underfunded liability of pensions in states like Kentucky have become so incredibly large that massive increases in annual contributions, courtesy of taxpayers, can"t possibly offset liability growth and annual payouts...a fact that teachers seem all to happy to ignore.

Of course, if teachers are truly just concerned about providing the "best education possible" for public school students...how about a compromise?  We"re almost certain that taxpayers would be more willing to fund your extravagant pensions if you would, in return, be willing to be evaluated, and potentially fired, based on performance metrics assessing the relative improvement of your students and therefore your effectiveness as a teacher...deal?

Welcome to the Age of Fury: “This Simmering Anger of the Populace Is Going to Start Boiling Over”

This article was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com

Are You Infuriated Yet?

by Chris Martenson

More and more, I’m encountering people who are simply infuriated with how our “leaders” are running (or to put it more accurately, ruining) things right now. And I share that fury.

It’s perfectly normal human response to be infuriated when an outside agent hurts you, especially if the pain seems unnecessary, illogical or random.

Imagine if your neighbor enjoyed setting off loud explosives at all hours of the day and night. Or if he had a habit of tailgating and brake-checking you every time he saw your car on the road. You’d been well within your rights to be infuriated.

Or to use a much more common example from the real world : When your politicians repeatedly pass laws that hurt you in favor of large corporations — that, too, is infuriating. Especially if those actions run directly counter to their campaign promises.

There’s a lot of be infuriated about in the world today, so go ahead and embrace your rage. By doing so, you’ll be in a better mindset to understand things like Brexit, Catalonia, and Trump, each of which is a reflection of the fury of your fellow citizens, who are finally waking up to the fact that they’ve been victims for too long.

An easy prediction to make is that this simmering anger of the populace is going to start boiling over more violently in the coming years. Welcome to the Age of Fury.

‘Over The Top’ Dumb

Do you ever get the sense that, as a society, we’re being dangerously reckless? Perhaps so dumb that we might not recover from the repercussions of our stupidity for many generations, if ever?

There are economic and financial idiocies in motion that are, by themselves, unsolvable predicaments without a peaceful solution. But when combined with resource depletion and declining net energy, they’re positively intractable.

Take for example the hundreds of trillions of dollars-worth of underfunded entitlement and pension promises. Those promises cannot be kept and they cannot be paid. Everybody with a basic comprehension of math can conclude as such.

Yet we continue to operate as if the opposite were true. We comfort ourselves that, somehow, all the promised future payouts will be made in full — even though the funds are insolvent, their returns are much lower than the actuarial projections require, and payout demand mercilessly rises each year.

Spoiler alert: This isn’t some future disaster lying in wait. It’s unfolding right now.

Take these headlines spanning the past several years:

• Congress approves plan to allow pension cuts (Dec 2014)


• 273,000 union workers and retirees brace for pension cuts (May 2, 2016)


• In unprecedented move, pension plan cuts benefits promised to retirees (Jan 27, 2017)  — note the laughable use of “unprecedented” here


• Teamsters face 31 percent pension cut (Mar 7, 2017)


• New York State Teamsters pension fund cuts approved (Sept 13, 2017)

When it comes to broken retirement promises, the future is now. It will be with us for a very long time.

Why? Because the math simply doesn’t work. It’s broken, it’s been broken for a long time. You can’t put too little in the piggy bank at the start, then raid it over time, and still expect to have enough at the end.

And yet we, as a society, have preferred to pretend as if that weren’t the case. Which, it turns out, was a terrible “strategy.”

But if you think that’s bad, you’re going to positively hate this chart:

The pension liabilities now blowing up are contained within the thin green smear in the middle of this chart. Think on the nation’s inability to handle that single crisis, and now reflect on how overwhelmed it’s going to be by the far larger predicaments that lie elsewhere on the chart.

The Infuriating Plunder-fest That Is Health Care

The Medicare liabilities (the orange and largest band on the above chart) are immense, and will only become more so as our largest demographic, the baby boomers, further ages. But they become especially infuriating when seen in the larger context of the racketeering that drives the health care system in the United States.

Instead of doing anything constructive about the high number of IOUs building up within Medicare, Washington DC politicians are sidestepping the most obvious elements that contribute the most to the problem. Enormously wasteful, the “healthcare” system is entirely out of control and spiraling deeper into an abyss that threatens to literally destroy the most productive segment of the US social structure: the middle and upper middle classes.

That should be a topic of serious discussion in the halls of power. But none is being had.

Literally each day brings worse news on the skyrocketing costs of healthcare. But, as with most topics, the media mostly focuses on the symptoms (prices) rather than the causes of the issue.

The real culprits here are the insurance cartel and a hospital system that has the most unfair, incomprehensible, and inhumane billing process ever devised. One easy to grasp feature of both the insurance companies and conspire to pay the executives far more than they actually deserve or are truly worth.

Health care premiums for 2018 set to go up by as much as 50 percent

Oct 5, 2017

Several states have announced rates for health insurance premiums on the Obamacare exchanges for 2018. Topping the list is Georgia, with rates that are 57 percent higher than last year, while Florida said some premiums will be 45 percent higher.

Among the reasons for these increases is the uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal and replace the health care law, which was passed under his predecessor President Barack Obama.

Insurers are raising premiums in the face of repeated threats from President Trump to stop funding so-called cost-sharing reductions, payments to insurers that cover out-of-pocket costs for some low-income consumers. Trump previously referred to these payments as “bailouts” for insurance companies and threatened to stop making the payments so as to “let Obamacare implode”. (Source)

That’s the story the health insurers are going with: they have to raise rates because they’re uncertain whether they will get AS MUCH LOOT under the new rules being considered as they did under the utterly disastrous Obamacare provisions.

How much loot are we talking about? Look at this chart of the stock price of United Healthcare (UNH) since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare):

If this chart showing massive near-4x gains in just 5 years, coupled with your steep annual premium increases, doesn’t infuriate you, you are just not getting it.

Even if your employer pays for your health care (somewhat obscuring the true impact of premium increases), the cost to you is fewer and lower pay increases, as well as steady yearly reductions in covered services along with higher co-pays and deductible amounts.

Still not infuriated? Ok, maybe this will do the trick. Here how much executive compensation at the major insurers was last year:

(Source)

The average family health care insurance premium in 2016 was $18,764, meaning that Mark Bertolini from Aetna alone required 100% of the premiums from more than 2,200 families just to pay him in 2016. Of course, the “C-suite” of these health care insurers are loaded with other high-paid parasites who are just as busy gouging the young and old alike.

This is a complete travesty and joke. Congress and the Senate, sitting on their deservedly low approval ratings, pretend they cannot do anything about it. Too complicated they say. Bullshit I say. Go after the obscene pay packages and profits of the insurance industry as a first matter of business. Then make it a crime for hospitals to bill people differently for the exact same services.

That’s a no-brainer. Can you imagine if your mechanic had a secret pricing formula for every customer that was, literally, based on their maximum ability to pay? Nobody would stand for it, it’s disgusting that we tolerate this when it comes to something as vital and necessary as our health and even lives.

Fury, not tolerance, is what’s needed now.

Conclusion (to Part 1)

The future has arrived. The pension losses are here and just getting started and the future will have a lot more of those sorts of broken promises.

The health care insurance crisis has been with us for 20 years or so now and Obamacare just put some extra accelerant on that fire, which is now consuming middle class households by the tens of thousands.

Both the pension and health care crises are infuriating and self-inflicted wounds. We could have avoided them by making wiser choices in the past. We didn’t. We could limit their damage by making better choices today. We almost assuredly won’t.

Current conversations and proposals are thinly disguised sleight-of-hand movements whose purpose is to deflect attention from the thefts underway. Anybody who studies the system and its math comes to the same conclusion: the corporations have all the power and they are misusing it for private gain.

Why there aren’t more politicians willing to call a spade a spade and actually protect their constituents is a real mystery. But the next wave of populist candidates certainly won’t be. People are sick and tired of being asked to give more and more while corporations and wealthy elites keep taking more and more.

It’s simply infuriating.

But that’s not the worst of it. The mistakes we are making right now in terms of energy policy and ecological destruction are far more dangerous to your personal health, liberty and future prospects than a simple market crash.

In Part 2: It’s Time For Action, we uncover the hidden downside risks in today’s financial markets and explain how, as destructive as a coming market crash will be, the longer-term damage to society and risks to your well-being are rooted in the potential breakdown of the systems we depend on to live.

As with pensions and health care, we are pursuing similar dangerously misguided policies in our farming & food systems, extraction of industrial resources, and ecological management — to name just a few.

There’s an appropriate time for fury. And that time is now — provided we use the anger to spur us into constructive action. Get your fury on.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

Kentucky Republicans Cave On Pension Reform; Stick It To Taxpayers With "Kick The Can" Approach Instead

After months of planning and cogitating over how to address the failing public pension systems in their state, which are somewhere between $40 and $80 billion under water, Governor Matt Bevin and the leaders of the General Assembly’s Republican majorities released their plan earlier today and it appears to be nothing more than the same old "kick the can down the road" approach to "pension reform" that has perpetuated the pension ponzi in this country for decades while doing absolutely nothing to address the actual crisis.

Here is a summary of the "plan" courtesy of the Courier-Journal...notice that aside from putting new teachers into a "401(k)-style" defined contribution plan, the Republican proposal does pretty much nothing else except demand that more taxpayer dollars be diverted to service failing pension plans.

Here are highlights of the multi-point proposal:

 

• There is no increase in the full retirement age for current workers

 

• There will be no reductions in pension checks for retirees, and it protects health care benefits for them.

 

• Future non-hazardous employees and teachers will be required to enroll in 401(k)-style plans.

 

• Hazardous duty employees, such as police officers and firefighters, will continue in the same system they are in now.

 

• The plan would close a loophole to ensure payment of death benefits to families of hazardous employees.

 

• The plan would stop the defined benefits plans for all legislators, moving them into the same plan as other state employees under the jurisdiction of Kentucky Retirement Systems.

Here"s an overview of the 10-point pension plan @GovMattBevin and GOP leaders have developed to try to fix Kentucky"s pension crisis. pic.twitter.com/tcXar5yyd7

— Morgan Watkins (@morganwatkins26) October 18, 2017

Not surprisingly, Governor Bevin, who as a politician is worried not so much about the long-term solvency of his state"s pensions as he is about getting through the next election cycle, said the plan "will be a model for this nation" as it "keeps the promise" to public workers and delivers on his promise to "do what is legally and morally right."

In reality, of course, Bevin"s plan does nothing to "keep any promise" and simply delays the inevitable collapse of a ponzi scheme that will eventually buckle from a wave of retiring baby boomers who have been sold a lie for decades.

Just as quick reminder to Bevin, below is a recap of the changes that his own pension consultants told Kentucky"s Public Pension Oversight Board would be required to save the pensions in his state (courtesy of the Lexington Herald Leader)...suggestions that he seemingly dismissed in their entirety...

An independent consultant recommended sweeping changes Monday to the pension systems that cover most of Kentucky’s public workers, creating the possibility that lawmakers will cut payments to existing retirees and force most current and future hires into 401(k)-style retirement plans.

 

If the legislature accepts the recommendations, it would effectively end the promise of a pension check for most of Kentucky’s future state and local government workers and freeze the pension benefits of most current state and local workers. All of those workers would then be shifted to a 401(k)-style investment plan that offers defined employer contributions rather than a defined retirement benefit.

 

PFM also recommended increasing the retirement age to 65 for most workers.

 

The 401 (k)-style plans would require a mandatory employee contribution of 3 percent of their salary and a guaranteed employer contribution of 2 percent of their salary. The state also would provide a 50 percent match on the next 6 percent of income contributed by the employee, bringing the state’s maximum contribution to 5 percent. The maximum total contribution from the employer and the employee would be 14 percent.

 

For those already retired, the consultant recommended taking away all cost of living benefits that state and local government retirees received between 1996 and 2012, a move that could significantly reduce the monthly checks that many retirees receive. For example, a government worker who retired in 2001 or before could see their benefit rolled back by 25 percent or more, PFM calculated.

 

The consultant also recommended eliminating the use of unused sick days and compensatory leave to increase pension benefits.

 

All of which just reminds us once again of how we once summed up public pensions in this country:

Defined Benefit Pension Plans are, in many cases, a ponzi scheme.  Current assets are used to pay current claims in full despite insufficient funding to pay future liabilities... classic Ponzi.  But unlike wall street and corporate ponzi schemes no one goes to jail here because the establishment is complicit.  Everyone from government officials to union bosses are incentivized to maintain the status quo...public employees get to sleep better at night thinking they have a "retirement plan," public legislators get to be re-elected by union membership while pretending their states are solvent and union bosses get to keep their jobs while hiding the truth from employees.  

Teachers Demand $3,200 From Each Kentucky Household To Fund Pension Ponzi For 2 Years

We have written frequently over the past couple of weeks about the disastrous public pension funds in Kentucky that are anywhere from $42 - $84 billion underfunded, depending on which discount rate you feel inclined to use. As we"ve argued before, these pensions, like the ones in Illinois and other states, are so hopelessly underfunded that they haven"t a prayer of ever again being made whole.

That said, logic and math have never before stopped pissed off teachers and/or clueless legislators from throwing good money after bad in an effort to "kick the can down the road" on their pension crises. As such, it should come as no surprise at all that the Lexington Herald Leader reported today that Kentucky"s 365,000 teachers and other public employees are now demanding that taxpayers contribute a staggering $5.4 billion to their insolvent ponzi schemes over the next two years alone. To put that number in perspective, $5.4 billion is roughly $3,200 for each household in the state of Kentucky and 25% of the state"s entire budget over a two-year period. 

Kentucky’s General Assembly will need to find an estimated $5.4 billion to fund the pension systems for state workers and school teachers in the next two-year state budget, officials told the Public Pension Oversight Board on Monday.

That amount would be a hefty funding increase and a painful squeeze for a state General Fund that — at about $20 billion over two years — also is expected to pay for education, prisons, social services and other state programs.

“We realize this challenge is in front of us. That’s obviously part of the need for us to address pension reform,” said state Sen. Joe Bowen, R-Owensboro, co-chairman of the oversight board.

“In the short-term, yeah, we’re obligated to find this money,” Bowen said. “And everybody is committed to do that. We have revealed this great challenge. We have embraced this great challenge, as opposed to previous members of the legislature, perhaps.”

In presentations on Monday, the pension oversight board was told that total employer contributions for KRS in Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020 would be an estimated $2.47 billion each year, up from $1.52 billion in the current fiscal year. Nearly $995 million of that would be owed by local governments. The remaining $1.48 billion is what the state would owe.

The Teachers’ Retirement System estimated that it would need a total of $1.22 billion in Fiscal Year 2019 and $1.22 billion in Fiscal Year 2020. That would include not only an additional $1 billion to pay down the system’s unfunded liabilities but also $139 million to continue paying the debt service on a pension bond that won’t be paid off until the year 2024.

Of course, the $5.4 billion will do absolutely nothing to avoid an inevitable failure of Kentucky"s pension system but what the hell...

As we"ve said before, the problem is that the aggregate underfunded liability of pensions in states like Kentucky have become so incredibly large that massive increases in annual contributions, courtesy of taxpayers, can"t possibly offset liability growth and annual payouts.  All the while, the funding for these ever increasing annual contributions comes out of budgets for things like public schools even though the incremental funding has no shot of fixing a system that is hopelessly "too big to bail."

So what can Kentucky do to solve their pension crisis?  Well, as it turns out they hired a pension consultant, PFM Group, in May of last year to answer that exact question.  Unfortunately, we suspect that PFM"s conclusions, which include freezing current pension plans, slashing benefit payments for current retirees and converting future employees to a 401(k), are somewhat less than palatable for both pensioners and elected officials who depend upon votes from public employee unions in order to keep their jobs...it"s a nice little circular ref that ensures that taxpayers will always lose in the fight to fix America"s broken pension system.

Be that as it may, here is a recap of PFM"s suggestions to Kentucky"s Public Pension Oversight Board courtesy of the Lexington Herald Leader:

An independent consultant recommended sweeping changes Monday to the pension systems that cover most of Kentucky’s public workers, creating the possibility that lawmakers will cut payments to existing retirees and force most current and future hires into 401(k)-style retirement plans.

If the legislature accepts the recommendations, it would effectively end the promise of a pension check for most of Kentucky’s future state and local government workers and freeze the pension benefits of most current state and local workers. All of those workers would then be shifted to a 401(k)-style investment plan that offers defined employer contributions rather than a defined retirement benefit.

PFM also recommended increasing the retirement age to 65 for most workers.

The 401 (k)-style plans would require a mandatory employee contribution of 3 percent of their salary and a guaranteed employer contribution of 2 percent of their salary. The state also would provide a 50 percent match on the next 6 percent of income contributed by the employee, bringing the state’s maximum contribution to 5 percent. The maximum total contribution from the employer and the employee would be 14 percent.

For those already retired, the consultant recommended taking away all cost of living benefits that state and local government retirees received between 1996 and 2012, a move that could significantly reduce the monthly checks that many retirees receive. For example, a government worker who retired in 2001 or before could see their benefit rolled back by 25 percent or more, PFM calculated.

The consultant also recommended eliminating the use of unused sick days and compensatory leave to increase pension benefits.

Meanwhile, PFM warned that the typical "kick the can down the road approach" would not work in Kentucky and that current retiree benefits would have to be cut.

“This is the time to act,” said Michael Nadol of PFM. “This is not the time to craft a solution that kicks the can down the road.”

“All of the unfunded liability that the commonwealth now faces is associated with folks that are already on board or already retired,” he said. “Modifying benefits for future hires only helps you stop the hole from getting deeper, it doesn’t help you climb up and out on to more solid footing going forward.”

Of course, no amount of math and logic will ever be sufficient to convince a bunch of retired public employees that they have been sold a lie that will inevitably fail now or fail later (take your pick) if drastic measures aren"t taken in the very near future. 

1 Million Ohio Public Employees Face Pension Cuts As Another Ponzi Teeters On The Brink

We"ve written frequently of late about the pension crisis in Kentucky where pensioners are facing potentially catastrophic benefit cuts as their politicians finally admit that they"ve been sold a fantasy for decades (see: Pension Consultant Offers Dire Outlook For Kentucky: Freeze Pension And Slash Benefits Or Else).

Unfortunately, Kentucky is not unique as there is a never-ending stream of similar pension failures popping up daily all around the country.  The latest such example comes to us from Ohio as the Dayton Daily News notes that the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) has been forced to consider COLA cuts for its 1 million pensioners in order to keep the fund solvent.

Ohio’s biggest public pension system is considering cutting the cost of living allowances for its 1-million members as a way to shore up the long-term finances of the fund.

Ohio Public Employees Retirement System trustees on Wednesday discussed options that could affect all current and future retirees, including tying the cost of living allowance to inflation and capping it and delaying the onset of the COLA for new retirees.

No decision has been made and trustees will discuss the options again in October. So far, some 72,000 members responded to an OPERS survey about possible changes. OPERS spokesman Todd Hutchins said 70 percent of retirees responding to the survey report that they prefer that the COLA be capped, rather than frozen.

So how bad is OPERS?  Per the latest valuation, Ohio taxpayers are on the hook for a roughly $20 billion underfunding.  Ironically, the fund ended 2016 with the highest underfunding in it"s history, after being nearly fully funded in 2007, despite a 275% surge in the S&P off the lows in 2009.  Perhaps someone can explain to us how these pensions stand a chance of ever again being fully funded if they can"t even manage to improve their balance sheet during one of the biggest equity bubbles in history?

Be that as it may, like all pensions the OPERS underfunding is only as good as the garbage assumptions used to calculate it.  As the following table shows, a mere 1% reduction in OPERS" discount rate would result in a $12 billion increase in the fund"s net liability.

Ironically, even OPERS" own financial report pegs its "Weighted Average Long-Term Expected Real Rate of Return" at just 5.66%.

Not surprisingly, OPERS is just one of many Ohio public pensions currently facing cuts.

OPERS is the latest of the five public pensions systems in Ohio to consider benefit cuts.

The State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio in April voted to indefinitely suspend the COLA for retired teachers. Trustees said they weren’t certain that the cut would be enough to shore up the finances of the $72-billion fund.

Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund is expected to hire a consultant to help restructure its health care benefits. OP&F announced in May it would switch in January 2019 to issuing stipends to each retiree, who can then use the money to purchase coverage.

School Employees Retirement System, which covers janitors, bus drivers and cafeteria workers, is taking steps to link its cost of living allowance to inflation, cap it at 2.5 percent, and delay its onset for new retirees.

Meanwhile, by protesting earlier this week Ohio employees demonstrated that they"re still in the "Shock and Denial" phase of dealing with the news that their pensions were always just a clever little fairy tale told to earn their votes.  Luckily, "Anger and Bargaining" is only 2 steps away in the 7-step process...

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...

Kentucky Public Employee Retirements Surge As Fears Of Pension Collapse Mount

Slowly but surely it is becoming increasingly clear to public workers in states with massively underfunded pensions that they"ve been lied to for the past several decades as their states can"t possibly afford to pay for the retirement they"ve all been promised.  As a local radio station in Bowling Green points out today, fears over potential pension changes in Kentucky have resulted in a surge of early retirements as workers move to lock in payouts before any potential cuts go into effect.

More state workers retired last month than the year before amid concerns that the legislature and Gov. Matt Bevin will make changes to state retirement plans.

David Smith, executive director for the Kentucky Association of State Employees, said state workers have been retiring after consultants hired by the state recommended drastic changes to the pension systems.

“There are folks that are saying you know what, I don’t care, I’m going to lock in my retirement now and get out while I can and fight it as a retiree if they go and change the retiree benefits,” he said.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that there was a 20 percent jump in state worker retirements last month.

“Who are they going to replace them with if they truly offer up what they’re proposing or what was proposed? Who is going to want to work for state government? I wouldn’t,” Smith said.

As we pointed out last week, Kentucky"s public pensions face a daunting funding hole of $33-$84 billion, depending on your discount rate assumptions, according to a recent analysis conducted by PFM Group.

The problem is that the aggregate underfunded liability of pensions in states like Kentucky have become so incredibly large that massive increases in annual contributions, courtesy of taxpayers, can"t possibly offset liability growth and annual payouts.  All the while, the funding for these ever increasing annual contributions comes out of budgets for things like public schools even though the incremental funding has no shot of fixing a system that is hopelessly "too big to bail."

So what can Kentucky do to solve their pension crisis?  Well, as it turns out they hired a pension consultant, PFM Group, in May of last year to answer that exact question.  Unfortunately, PFM"s conclusions, which include freezing current pension plans, slashing benefit payments for current retirees and converting future employees to a 401(k), are somewhat less than "perfectly acceptable" for both pensioners and elected officials who depend upon votes from public employee unions in order to keep their jobs...it"s a nice little circular ref that ensures that taxpayers will always lose in the fight to fix America"s broken pension system.

Be that as it may, here is a recap of PFM"s suggestions to Kentucky"s Public Pension Oversight Board courtesy of the Lexington Herald Leader:

An independent consultant recommended sweeping changes Monday to the pension systems that cover most of Kentucky’s public workers, creating the possibility that lawmakers will cut payments to existing retirees and force most current and future hires into 401(k)-style retirement plans.

If the legislature accepts the recommendations, it would effectively end the promise of a pension check for most of Kentucky’s future state and local government workers and freeze the pension benefits of most current state and local workers. All of those workers would then be shifted to a 401(k)-style investment plan that offers defined employer contributions rather than a defined retirement benefit.

PFM also recommended increasing the retirement age to 65 for most workers.

The 401 (k)-style plans would require a mandatory employee contribution of 3 percent of their salary and a guaranteed employer contribution of 2 percent of their salary. The state also would provide a 50 percent match on the next 6 percent of income contributed by the employee, bringing the state’s maximum contribution to 5 percent. The maximum total contribution from the employer and the employee would be 14 percent.

For those already retired, the consultant recommended taking away all cost of living benefits that state and local government retirees received between 1996 and 2012, a move that could significantly reduce the monthly checks that many retirees receive. For example, a government worker who retired in 2001 or before could see their benefit rolled back by 25 percent or more, PFM calculated.

The consultant also recommended eliminating the use of unused sick days and compensatory leave to increase pension benefits.

Even if all of that is accomplished, State Budget Director John Chilton said Kentucky would still need to find an extra $1 billion a year just to keep its frozen pension systems afloat. Moreover, absent tax hikes the state will ultimately be forced to cut funding for K-12 schools by $510 million and slash spending at most other agencies by nearly 17% to make up the difference.

Meanwhile, PFM warned that the typical "kick the can down the road approach" would not work in Kentucky and that current retiree benefits would have to be cut.

“This is the time to act,” said Michael Nadol of PFM. “This is not the time to craft a solution that kicks the can down the road.”

“All of the unfunded liability that the commonwealth now faces is associated with folks that are already on board or already retired,” he said. “Modifying benefits for future hires only helps you stop the hole from getting deeper, it doesn’t help you climb up and out on to more solid footing going forward.”

Of course, no amount of math and logic will ever be sufficient to convince a bunch of retired public employees that they have been sold a lie that will inevitably fail now or fail later (take your pick) if drastic measures aren"t taken in the very near future. 

Nicolai Jilek, the legislative representative for the Kentucky Fraternal Order of Police, said expecting first responders to work until they are 60 is problematic given the physical requirements of the job.

“We’re very grateful that PFM is just offering recommendations … that they are not lawmakers because his plan would be horrible for first responders,” Jilek said.

Stephanie Winkler, president of the Kentucky Education Association, shared a similar sentiment.

“The PFM had some pretty drastic recommendations that we think are not what’s in the best interest of public school employees and public school students,” Winkler said.

Jim Carroll, president of Kentucky Government Retirees, said his group would likely sue if the legislature proceeds with PFM’s recommendation to roll back the cost of living adjustment that retirees received between 1996 and 2012.

“We think its very clear that the cost of living adjustments that were granted to us are ours as long as we are retirees in the system,” Carroll said.

As such, no matter the long-term consequences, we suspect the "kick the can down the road" approach to pension reform will continue to win right up until the plans actually run out of money...then we"ll all lose together.