MAP-21
Buried in a transportation bill called MAP-21 (passed last June by Congress) is the root of the confusion regarding pension valuation/liability. Link below is an analysis from vanguard explaining details.
Key Points:
- Congress changed the interest rate used to project pension liabilities from a 2-year avg to a 25-year average.
- They required a significant increase in PBGC contributions.
https://institutional.vanguard.com/iam/pdf/REGC21.pdf
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
Comments
Good news that they're finally going to up the PBGC contributions. That was sorely needed. And if I read this right, sounds like a 40% increase over a couple of years.
Need to keep an eye on that and make sure it actually happens...if it does, it's a very good thing.
Reading this, it doesn't seem to be as simple as just 2-year average vs 25-year average, but that is the general shape and direction of the change. And it does explain the very different sets of numbers in the recent mailer on the pension. Strange that this was in a transportation bill, but I guess these are the ways of washington.