NCPERS News Clips

6/29/2010

News Clips for June 29th, 2010

• Bad News for Public Pension Funds and Taxpayers
  The Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is preparing to release a preliminary view of proposed pension accounting reforms, which could increase the need for higher contributions to finance public pension funds.
• Public Pension Cuts, Once Unthinkable, Now On The Table
  Until now, public pension reform meant offering cheaper benefits to new hires. Huge unfunded retirement liabilities owed to current workers have barely been touched.
• President Signs Bill Providing Temporary Funding Relief for Pension Plans
  President Barack Obama signed HR 3962, the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010, on Friday. The bill includes the so-called "doc fix," increasing Medicare reimbursement to physicians by 2.2% through the end of November, in place of a scheduled 21% cut.
• Employers See More Cost and Less Benefit from Health Care Reform
  Few employers believe that the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will stem the tide of rising costs, according to a May 2010 survey by Towers Watson.
• California Pension Plans Justify Huge Union Benefits By Forecasting The Dow To Hit 28 MILLION
  After California granted disastrous 20 - 50% benefit increases to unions in 1999, the state's pension plans justified the huge future cost by forecasting bubble-style stock market returns for the next hundred years.
• New York pension fund to sue BP for investment losses
  New York state's pension fund plans to sue BP Plc to recover losses from the drop in the company's stock price following the worst oil spill in U.S. history, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Wednesday.