The pension bomb

From the NY Post:

...some 275,000 retired NYC employees — including 69,775 teachers, 44,290 cops, 17,404 firefighters and 13,664 others — cost city taxpayers $6.7 billion this year, as officials dipped into the general revenue to make up pension-investment shortfalls. That’s up from only $703 million in 2000. By 2016, taxpayers will be on the hook for $12.3 billion.

Pension losses from last year’s economic crash have hit New York taxpayers like a fiscal stealth bomb.

The city has to pay its employee retirement funds an extra $30 billion to cover last year’s huge investment losses, plus interest and higher benefit payments, The Post has learned.

The city’s five pension funds plunged in value from $101.9 billion to $79.5 billion in fiscal year 2009, according to city Comptroller Bill Thompson’s new Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

The five funds — covering cops, firefighters, teachers, transit, sanitation and other workers — lost about $20 billion in stocks and other investments in disastrous FY 2009, which ended June. 30.

Since, by law, the city has to increase assets by 8% a year, that adds $8 billion to the shortfall, plus $2 billion from increased benefit payments.