The Pension Cartoon
August 24, 2018·0 comments·In Brief
Chicago is proposing to borrow $10 billion to plug a pension funding gap by buying riskier assets. If markets move against them, that leverage could wipe the entire fund to zero. The solution looks reasonable on a spreadsheet because it assumes cities can always raise taxes or cut benefits. But pension managers are only gambling this hard because they've realized they can't do either anymore.
• The rescue plan requires risk that doesn't match the stakes. Chicago's bonds are taxable, forcing higher borrowing costs that can only be overcome if the pension fund takes on stock-heavy portfolios. A severe market downturn combined with leverage could collapse the entire plan, not just reduce its funding.
• This move reveals something pension trustees won't say publicly. You don't take on existential risk unless you've quietly discovered that the escape routes everyone assumed existed (raising taxes, cutting benefits) are actually closed. The narratives that kept the crisis hidden are breaking down.
• The emperor's clothes are coming off slowly, not all at once. Long-term return assumptions, actuarial smoothing, and creative accounting kept pension underfunding invisible for years. These cartoons don't vanish overnight, but they do unwind. And each year the unwinding accelerates.
• Other cities are watching Chicago like vultures. If this bond issuance "works," it becomes a template for every underfunded pension plan in America. That's not a precedent. That's contagion waiting to spread.
• The political system that created this has no way to fix it. Raising taxes and cutting benefits simultaneously is the only real solution, but no political environment allows both at once. So instead, cities will keep gambling until the math becomes impossible to hide.
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