We have reported on CALPers, Illinois and the Teamsters Pension funds
being nothing more than a shell with little more than I.O.U.’s in the vaults.
This is to say nothing of what happened in Detroit when that city filled
bankruptcy or Dallas Pension Fund. Bankers are making out like the bandits
they are, and your pension fund, yes yours, is possibly bankrupt. Believe
what you will, but if you are counting on a state or city pension fund you
may want to consider thinking about making other arrangements. This is not
financial advice, as we do not offer financial advice. It might make sense to
someone that is concerned about their future to think about what all these
ringing alarm bells mean to you.
The steam that is building began in earnest in 2012 and has been picking
up speed ever since. Look no further than some of the recent events we have documented time and
again – Detroit, CALPers, Jeremy Stein, Teamsters and Dallas Pension Fund. All of these events have taken place
in less than five years. What will the next four-plus years bring? How much
longer should one sit on their hands and watch as thousands upon thousands of
people either have retirement stolen or placed on lock-down as is the case
with the Dallas Police Pension fund?
The latest ponzi scheme to be identified and exposed was reported by Florida Watchdog.
Florida lawmakers are using an accounting tweak to defer payments on $20
billion in pension debt, a maneuver that not only hides the “true cost of
government” from voters but “passes this expense on to future taxpayers,” Truth
in Accounting (TIA) CEO and Founder Sheila Weinberg said.
Speaking with Watchdog.org in advance
of Tuesday’s release of TIA’s annual ‘Financial State of the States’ report,
Weinberg said if the state’s unfunded pension liability was included in its
financial statement, Florida would have $58.6 billion available in assets to
pay $70.1 billion worth of bills – an $11.6 billion shortfall.
Every Florida taxpayer, she said, has a $1,800 share – and counting – in
this unfunded pension debt.
TIA, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to government fiscal
transparency, analyzed and graded all 50 state governments’ fiscal health
based on their latest Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFRs) filings.
Across all 50 states, TIA calculated more than $1.5 trillion of unfunded
debt, “a huge financial burden for current and future taxpayers,” much of it
related to public employee health care and retiree benefits.
Florida, once again, scored in the lowest dozen states, earning a ‘C’ in
TIA’s report because, like many states, it defers paying down pension debts
year after year while only budgeting the bare minimum annually to fund the
plan.
Of the $60.8 billion in retirement benefits promised to nearly 400,000
former public workers enrolled in the Florida Retirement System (FRS),
TIA maintains in its report that the state has not funded $10.9 billion in
pension and $9.3 billion in retiree health care benefits.
“The state has put no money aside to pay for those promises. Future
taxpayers will have to pay for them,” Weinberg said.
Because the state “doesn’t want to fess up” about its unfunded pension
debt, she said Florida’s reported net position is “inflated” by $4.3 billion.
“It’s showing $4.3 billion less in the red than if they had incurred that
cost” of paying down the pension debt, Weinberg said. Source
We have studied, researched and written about this for well over four
years. Harry Markopolous, in 2011, tried to warn us about the ongoing theft,
within the pension funds, on a daily basis by the banking cabal – link. CALPers pension program is north of 50% underfunded
and losing a little more each and every quarter. – link. These are merely two of the articles that paint a
picture of a tsunami of pension bankruptcies in the near future.
It is very clear these state, city and larger private pension funds have
become nothing more than a fraud and a way for these institutions to
continually transfer our wealth to the coffers of others.
