Plender on US UK public liabilities

As Pogoff says, sovereign crises wash up a lot of implicit obligations...

Good run through of how higher discount rates lower future liabilities, and the reverse for the California's three biggest public pension funds, Calpers, Calstrs and the University of California Retirement System...

"On this basis, the funding shortfall of the three funds at July 2008 would be $450bn rather than the disclosed figure of $55bn.

The Stanford academics estimate the current deficit at more than $500bn, which, on my calculation, amounts to five times the total tax revenues of the state of California..."