(2010-09-14) Public Pension Underfunding

A few weeks ago, at the insistence of the Securities and Exchange Commission, New Jersey agreed never again to fraudulently hide its underfunding of the state’s public pension system. Meanwhile, in Albany, Harry Wilson, the Republican candidate for state comptroller, has asserted that — if you do the math the way any ordinary financial analyst or economist would — NewYork’s Pension system is underfunded by tens of billions of dollars and that, as a result, the state is essentially insolvent.