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NYT |
To Cover Pension Promises, Governments Turn to Bonds
- Many state and local governments, facing ballooning pension promises
to police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public employees, are
rushing to sell bonds to cover the shortfall. That strategy has sometimes
backfired in recent years, leaving taxpayers on the hook for even more
debt.
- More sales are coming. Wisconsin and Oregon each plan one before
the end of this year, and Kansas has authorized a sale. West Virginia, home
of the nation's weakest public pension plan — according to a study by
Wilshire Associates, the state teacher's plan has only $1 for every $5 is
owes — is fighting a court battle to sell $3.9 billion of the bonds
without first holding a referendum. In California, a planned $1.9 billion
bond sale for state employees' pensions contributed to the fiscal uproar
that led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis.
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NYT |
Number of Job Hunters 65 or Older Skyrockets - NYTimes.com
- It is well known that during the nation’s gale-force recession,
many older Americans who dreamed of
continued to work,
often because their
had plunged in value.
- In fact, there are more Americans 65 and older in the job market
today than at any time in history, 6.6 million, compared with 4.1 million
in 2001.
- Less well known, though, is that nearly half a million workers 65
and older want to work but cannot find a job — more than five times
the level early this decade and this group’s highest unemployment level
since
.
- Patricia Piazza, 66, who worked for
for 30 years as an
analyst, knows that all too well.
- She and her 72-year-old husband, a longtime employee at General Motors
Acceptance Corporation, had planned to retire by now, but she is hunting
for job, and he recently landed one with the local transit system.
- Their home in Warren, Mich., has dropped $100,000 in value, Ms. Piazza
said, while their pensions, as former nonunion employees, will be far less
than anticipated because of the auto company bankruptcies.
- Chrysler recently took away her
policy and
optical coverage, she said.
- “It’s like the bottom fell out of everything” she
said. “This isn’t the way we planned retirement.”
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