11 State Pension Funds that May Run Out of Money

Posted Oct 18, 2010 03:50pm EDT by Gus Lubin in Investing, Recession, Election

Provided by The Business Insider, October, 18, 2010:

Here's a shocker: The most immediate state pension crises aren't in New York or California. They're in Middle America.

When it comes to state pensions in the most trouble, do places like New Hampshire come to mind?

Probably not, unless you live there, and maybe not even then. After all, it makes sense that the biggest, most populous members of the union, where budget follies are fairly common, would be facing the most urgently needed fixes. The truth is considerably different. The Granite State claims the No. 11 slot, and it's not the only unexpected name facing pension woes.

Hawaii, Kansas and others made their way on to the list. Now, these pension plans aren't going to be obliterated tomorrow -- New Hampshire, for instance, is estimated to see its plan run out of money in 2022, so they've got 12 years to rectify the situation.

For some other states, the matter is more pressing, and no more so than for the Land of Lincoln.
Illinois is just 8 years away from exhausting its pension fund and creating a yearly $14 billion hole, according to data from Joshua Ruah an associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

That's a projected 32 percent of the state's revenue going to fill a pension hole. Every year.
Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Colorado are among the next pension funds to fall. The rest of the union is just around the corner.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/11-state-pension-funds-that-may-run-of-out-money-535516.html?tickers=^dji,^tnx,^gspc,spy,dia

building for years. I wish I could remember just how long ago I first read the odd article about the eventual coming crisis in state pensions. It may have been as long ago as the 70's, but even if it was twenty years later, meaning the 90's, this has been an open secret for a long time.

Only rarely has anyone bothered to look at the actual numbers of public employees who will retire and bothered to do the math. I guess that just like private employees, whose companies have too-often taken back their pension promises, public employees will soon experience a loss or at least a severe diminishment of their promised pensions.

then Lehman Brothers and every other institutional scam and collapse between. Institutional investors like pensions, states, countries, banks, and brokerages have been hammered to different extents by the collapse of fraud at the top. Pension funds have been hit hardest of all.

They're all going to be paying out a lot less than they were supposed to.

I see three states, Indiana and New Jersey and Louisiana with their governors tied to the ramblings of GOP nominee for President in 2012. All I hear in Indiana at least is that our governor is so fiscally conservative, yadayadayada and then this comes out!? Do people not realize they are stupid and voting for worsening the country and states or is it the stupid bug that Conservaflubs have had as an epidemic for over 100 years?

think of a reason for pension funds to go bankrupt unless they were underfunded for decades. However, medical expenses for retirees is a killer with 20% increases yearly.