(Harvest) Currently, many pension funds, like the one in Houston, are scrambling to slightly lower return rates, issue debt, raise taxes or increase contribution limits to fill some of the gaping holes of underfunded liabilities in their plans. The hope is such measures combined with an ongoing bull market, and increased participant contributions, will heal the plans in the future.This is not likely to be the case.
This problem is not something born of the last ‘financial crisis,’ but rather the culmination of 20-plus years of financial mismanagement.
