Since South Carolina Treasurer Curtis Loftis took office more than two years ago and has made it his mission to overhaul the state investment commission that oversees the state's pension fund.

"There's nothing more that government can do to help jobs and economic growth than for the Legislature to put a comprehensive public pension bill on my desk by the end of this month," Gov. Pat Quinn said.

According to the report, it's unreasonable for public pension plans to assume an 8-percent rate of return when many economists project lower returns in the future.

A plan to gradually shift ongoing pension costs to state universities and community colleges surfaced in the Illinois House Thursday and could be the model for shifting pension costs for K-12 schools.

Dissatisfied with state pension reforms enacted last year that affect 1.8 million current and former government workers, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel says without more changes "there will be nothing left at the end of the rainbow" when public employees retire.

To be fully funded, Delaware must increase its annual contribution to the pension system based on a market valuation of plan liabilities. This paper analyzes Delaware’s pension system on a fair-market or government- guaranteed basis, with reference to the average US Treasury rate on 10- and 20-year bonds in June 2012. A discussion of the discrepancy between current government accounting conventions and the fair-market value approach and the implications for plan management follows.

Wilshire Consulting estimates that the ratio of pension assets-to-liabilities, or funding ratio, for all 134 state pension plans was 73% in 2012, down from an estimated 77% in 2011. This deterioration in funding ratio was fueled by global stock market volatility in the twelve months ending June 30, 2012. Growth in fund assets could not keep up with growth in plan liabilities over fiscal 2012.

Was the slow recovery of the U.S. economy from the trough of the Great Recession anticipated? 

Alternative views on the problem the United States is facing: financing retirement consumption as its population ages.

Recent years have witnessed intense pension reform efforts in countries around the globe, often involving an increased use of funded pension programmes managed by the private sector. These funded arrangements are likely to play an increasingly important role in delivering retirement income in many countries and privately managed pension assets will play an increasing role in financial markets, notably as a source of long-term savings.

Published annually since 2005 by the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development  (OECD) Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, Pension Markets in Focus provides accurate, comprehensive, comparable and up-to-date statistics to help policy makers, regulators and market participants measure, compare and evaluate programme developments and country experiences globally.

The goal is to enact systemic change and create a climate for long-term solvency for Kentucky's public pensions. This requires changing the very structure of the system while providing the minimum amount of one-time immediate funding to stave off bankruptcy in the state employees’ fund. Steps also must be taken to set in place policies that will enable the commonwealth to avoid such pension crises in the future.

There are three important lessons from the Wisconsin collective bargaining battles over the past eighteen months:

1. The power of the government-sector unions and their impact on elections is greatly overestimated. With the November 2012 victory for  Senate Republicans to regain control of the Wisconsin Senate,  government employee union  suffered their sixth  major defeat since March 2011.

2. When given a choice, government employees will quit their union in large numbers.

3. Government employees' salaries and benefits, particularly pensions, are financially unsustainable in most states and collective bargaining reform is needed.

The time for state and local governments to offer defined contribution retirement plans that protect both taxpayer dollars and public employee retirement security is now.

This paper examines the ongoing fiscal crisis caused by health-care plans for retirees (known as "other post-employment benefits," or OPEB) in one of the hardest-hit states, California, and outlines necessary reforms that should come before tax increases or cuts to government services.

In June 2012, nearly 70% of San Jose voters approved "Measure B" - a set of pension reforms that the City Council placed on the ballot after more than 8 months of negotiations with our employee unions.