Pension Funds Burn Cities as $1 Trillion Shortfall Set to Grow

``"If you're AAA or AA rated and you've got significant and visible unfunded pension obligations, you've only got one direction to go in terms of rating, and that's potentially down," said Jeff Lipton, head of municipal research in New York at Oppenheimer & Co. "It's the presentation on the balance sheet that is now going to drive urgency."... Moody's, which in 2013 began using a lower rate than governments do to calculate future liabilities, has estimated that the 25 largest U.S. public pensions alone have $2 trillion less than they need. Cincinnati and Minneapolis are among cities Moody's has since downgraded.'''