Originally Posted by
Locke09
An addendum to my post above.
In order to show Detroit's pensions losing 30% of their value, someone had to carve out an 18-month period which happens to coincide with the worst 18 months for the stock market. But Detroit reports on July 1 - June 30th basis. So there is actually no year when Detroit lost 30%. Here is the real comparison of Detroit to MERS [[rate of return) for just the last four fiscal year periods:
2008 MERS: -25%, Detroit: -5.8%
2007 MERS: 8.57%, Detroit: 18.1%
2006 MERS: 13.6%, Detroit: 11.8%
2005 MERS: 6.8%, Detroit: 9.8%
Any independent auditor would tell you Detroit's pension plans are doing far better than MERS.