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

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.