>Most people owed pensions are solidly middle class. The middle class is gone. >They are way better off than the young people who will be paying for them. As

>Most people owed pensions are solidly middle class. The middle class is gone. >They are way better off than the young people who will be paying for them. As opposed to the oligarchs who are trying to leech wealth from both groups? >And blaming the financial sector for the pension crisis is ridiculous. Did you read the link? What happened to Detroit was looting and fraud. Plain and simple. >States and municipalities entered into very risky financial arrangements because for years they made very optimistic actuarial assumptions about pension fund growth Optimistic == We assumed that interest rates would not be dropped to zero to bail out the financial sector. This was a reasonable actuarial assumption pre-2008 and it should have been a reasonable actuarial assumption post-2008. >Investing in those risky assets Investing in those risky assets largely happened after the government decided to drop interest rates to zero in order to bail out the banks. Much of it was also driven by un-prosecuted fraud.