Page 3 - Pension Problem News Today

Philadelphia has had economic crisis. what have you learned from allentown you will put into play. >> allin town is a great story, like every other rust belt city in the northeast and midwest. we were on the verge of collapse when i came in eight years ago. our economy was failing. we didnt have jobs, economic growth. we were really on the brink of bankruptcy. in eight years we turned that around. we now have a solid fiscal foundation to build upon. we turn multi-million dollar deficits, we solv...

Required pension contributions last year. only nine. those are the states that have set aside less than 60% of the required pension contributions. $3.5 billion, detroit city manager kevyn orr estimates thats how much of the citys pension liability are unfunded making it a fifth of the citys debt. 36%, thats how much of its pension obligations the city of chicago funded last year. $1 trillion and possibly more is how much u.s., state and municipal are underfunded. the pension problem is very real...

Pensions that is affect afc being the city is playing out and lots of other places in the country. has an enormous pension problem looming on the state of horizon, chicago does and so do many other big cities. detroit and resolution to this pension problem, i think, will serve as an example to other cities grappling with the balance of interest between the creditors on one side and the retirees on the other. >> you say an extreme example. we talked about these stats in rents weeks but bear repea...

Approximately another $3.5 million is unfunded pensions. only $2 million roughly of that $12 billion or so is related to unsecured bond debt, the vast majority of it has to do with pensions and health care. >> why not seek a bailout? new york city in the 70s got a bailout from the federal government. why not try to seek a bailout from the state or the federal government? >> that was a different time, first of all. these are problems of detroits own making. if we go back and look at the jen sus o...

From a financial standpoint. i think other states and communities are facing this. frankly, the national governments facing it. >> its going to be an interesting conversation that i think -- you talk to mayors. doesnt matter their party. you talk to governors. they whisper about this pension problem. they dont want to talk about it publicly. >> chicagos another place, you know, illinois. theyre on the edge. weve had other cities come right up to the brink or go other. >> if youre a mayor you hav...

Ask whether there will be enough in the fund when they are ready to retire. the problem is the squeeze. >> fan it is tick. that was squeezey the pension python the cartoon character introduced by the office of illinois governor pat quinn to raise public awareness about the states growing pension problem. they owe more than they have in the coffers. legislate tours failed to enact any meaningful reform. this past weekend moody investor as service decided to downgrade to the lowest in the nation. ...

Governor, it was squeezy that python. why is that the feds responsibility to bail people out of their own bad decision-making? >> it might be good politics to do that, president obama porting the people who supported him, but it very bad economics. in illinois, you ran the tape of the pension python. that python is $233 billion in the state of illinois. those that dont have the money. what they should be doing is addressing the pension problem. they are not doing so. beneath the surface, the des...

The government has increased its attack on the center even though rebels did have hand-to-hand with heavy weapons last week. the helicopters and jet fighters are moving too much for them. shannon: republicans pouncing on a pu report that a member of president obamas inner circle took $100,000 in speaking fees from a company tied to iran. reports say david plouffe gave a pair of speeches to a subsidiary of a telecom company two months before he joined the white house staff. that company was doing...

The largest u.s. city so far so ever file for bankruptcy. >> so what does that mean and can we expect more cities to fail like this? stu varney is here to talk about all this. stu, what happened in stockton? >> ok, the city spent big when times were good. >> right. >> it then went through an awful real estate crash. gave 15% unemployment in the city. it then cut back its budget dramatically, a quarter of the cops were fired. a third of the firefighters laid off. 40% of the employees all gone but...

Huge budget problem here, right? >> you have the pension problem which causes that, its $81 billion of long-term debt created over the years. weve got a $9 billion deficit in the budget which we cant make up this year alone, but we have reduced -- are trying to reduce this budget which we hope to pass in the next couple of days, which will reduce last years spending by as much as $6 billion, as well as tied with that a medicaid reform that we just passed that reduces that budget by 2.5 billion. ...