California Pension Meltdown

The L.A.Daily News has the article of the day.If you read one complete article today this is the one.California public pensions may bankrupt America's largest state:

Years of bestowing lavish pensions and benefits on public employees has left dozens of the state's largest agencies with billions of dollars in unpaid liabilities that experts warn could start a cascade of bankruptcies, service cuts and tax increases.

According to a Daily News review of agencies in Los Angeles and across the state, California's largest public agencies face setting an extra $108 billion aside in the coming years to pay for promised retiree pensions, health care and workers' compensation claims.

That's a tenfold increase over the $10 billion the state Legislative Analyst's Office calculated among hundreds of public agencies statewide just three years ago.

"It's absolutely stunning," said Steven B. Frates, a senior fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College. "We're just seeing the beginning of this. It's going to get worse, not better.

These overpaid government workers are getting way too good of a deal.Virtually nobody in the private sector gets a huge percentage or more of their salary each and every year when they retire.The problem is these workers have the right to vote for state legislators who've given them this lavish deal.Anyone who owns California municipal bonds should read this.Would you really want to be a long term creditor of the state of California? How do you reign in benefits when government workers vote?