Description: Responding to Sandy Mackenzie's "Report", these comments primarily suggest additional disclosures for assessing public pension plan financial health.

Description: The Actuary Vol. 22, No. 1. This article discusses the impact of a change in procedure in the financing of the US Military Retirement System. The change requires amortizing the past service liability. The impact will depend upon whether the amortization is achieved by increasing current taxes and decreasing the current deficit, or by merely increasing the national debt and leaving the current deficit unchanged. The author asserts that the new financing method will not weaken the financial condition of the military retirement system, and that it has the potential to strengthen its financial condition if the funding of the past service liability is handled appropriately.

Description: Feature article discussing the changes France made to its pension systems in 2010, with some history.

Description: A reprint of testimony Carol Bogosian made to the ERISA Advisory Council providing guidance on employee disclosures based on SOA post retirement research.

Description: This article is a review of the book “Public Employee Pension Funds,” by Robert Tilove, published in 1976 by Columbia University Press. The book concentrates on the major public policy issues affecting plans of state and local governments. A more detailed review of this book will be published in the “Transactions.”

Description: This report presents the results of the work undertaken in response to the SIPF’s request. The premise of this work is that there is a need for a concise but still comprehensive and focused report on the financial health and prospects of state and municipal plans to give stakeholders the overview they need to come to informed opinions about the need for changes to the structure of these plans. The report needs to strike a balance between narrative and quantitative indicators of a plan’s financial health.

Description: Recent studies have suggested that teachers would be better off with DC or Cash Balance plans than with DB. Detailed data from CalSTRS support the opposite.

Description: This article summarizes the presentations by the Society of Actuaries and the Academy of Actuaries at the January 2015 National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) Roundtables in Washington DC. SOA presented on the 2014 SOA monograph series "The Link between Retirement Security and Long-Term Care."

Description: Responding to Sandy Mackenzie's "Report", these comments primarily suggest additional disclosures for assessing public pension plan financial heath.