State and local government retirement systems had nearly $3 trillion in assets at the end of last year, according to a brief released this month by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators and the National Council on Teacher Retirement. That was a 35 percent increase since the funds collectively bottomed out at the end of March 2009.
A joint press release by the two pro-defined benefits organizations says that "recent plan redesign efforts underway in virtually every state" and higher median returns of about 13 percent in 2010, help explain the increase.
The release quotes a blast from Keith Brainard, NASRA's research director, aimed at public pension critics who use older numbers: "Discussions of pension funding should use these more recent figures instead of depressed asset values that are no longer accurate. Out-of-date numbers create misleading impressions about the true financial condition of public pension plans.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome to the LASERS eBeam online community. We value your comments, however to keep our blog focused, we have set some comment guidelines.
This blog is moderated and all comments are subject to review. Comments will be posted entirely at the discretion of the blog administrator.
To ensure exchanges that are informative, respectful of diverse viewpoints, and lawful, we will NOT post comments that are:
Off Topic - We will exclude comments not related to the subject of the Blog post.
Spam - Comments focused on selling a product or service.
Personal Attacks - We would like to hear from you, but ask that you refrain from personal attacks or being disrespectful of others.
Derogatory - Comments including, but not limited to, profane or provocative language will be excluded (which means that hateful, racially or ethnically offensive content, threats, obscene or sexually explicit language will not be tolerated).
Anonymous - We ask commenters to create a Blogger ID before they can post.