Money talk
Okay, so, I’m no economist, but I have been following along with this whole economy fiasco for quite a while now. The government dumped a ton of cash into TARP with the idea that it would revitalize the entire system, causing credit to flow and eventually the stock market to rebound. Well, it hasn’t really happened yet and with stocks down, the proverbial cards are starting to fall in other areas, including pensions. In Baltimore, there’s an upcoming public pension fund crisis because the system is now underfunded and investments in the pension fund are in the dumps. Surprised? Well, it’s not too startling to think that a system that pays people as much as 66 percent of their ending salary after they retire (adjusted for inflation, and sometimes it pays them longer than they actually worked) might be teetering on the brink. A few people have been predicting this for awhile now.
Reason Magazine thinks this thing could be huge. I’m not a huge fear mongerer, but you have to wonder: unlike GM and Chrysler, whch can declare bankruptcy and just void contracts with employees, the goverment might have a different type of responsibility. Pensions aren’t neccessarily a bad thing as far as I’m concerned, but maybe we need to take a look at the benefits we afford our public employees.
