NY Like NJ Forgot To Fund Retiree Health Benefits And NY Adds $56.3 Billion To Its Unfunded Liabilities

   The Ithaca Journal falsely reports,"New York's [pension]plans aren't underfunded."   They must be comparing with the pending NJ disaster of a $120 billion dollar pension shortfall.  But NY pensions assume a 7.5% return on pension assets when they only earned 1.1%.  NY's unfunded pension debt is estimated at $143 billion dollars.   When NJ defaults, NY would soon follow.

     But what about funding retiree health benefits liability.  Pew reports, "States had only about $31 billion, or 5 percent, saved toward their obligations for retiree health care benefits."    NY had $56.3 billion dollars in retiree health benefits unfunded and according to Pew had 0.0% in its retiree health benefits funding account.   While NJ had $66.7 billion in retiree health benefits, also funded at 0.0%.

     New Yorkers now have another $56.3 billion dollars divided by 19.4 million NY population = $2,902 debt per person to add to the already calculated $24,195 State and local debt per person (link). We have a new higher total of $27,097 State and local debt per person or $108,388 for a family of four.

      Is the NY pot blacker than the NJ kettle?   Will investors want NY bonds or NJ bonds?  Neither NJ or NY can't withdraw from the USA like Greece and issue their own worthless currency to pay off its bondholders. 
  
      But in Albany, the thinking is, "What debt crisis?  Our pensions are 100% funded, aren't they?  We can fund retiree health benefits next year, right?  Andrew Cuomo has brought Hope and Change and balanced the budget, right?" Although, Andrew Cuomo had promised to throttle lobbyists in NY, "Spending on lobbying in New York tops $200 million in 2010."   And lobbyists are controlling his committees. 

  Meanwhile out in the cruel dark financial world outside Albany, China is reducing its holding of US debt.  link to China and NY debt      link to NY bondholders lose big in NY bankruptcy/default

And now the Chinese Debt Master holds the ball, and now he lets it go,

And now the air is shattered by the force of Cuomo's blow.

Oh, somewhere in our favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;

But there is default in Albany,  the mighty Cuomo has struck out.


link to poem