Realcent.org

The city of Central Falls, R.I., has made an offer to its police and firefighter retirees. They either will accept a 50 percent reduction of their pensions or risk losing close to all of their pension benefits when the city files for bankruptcy.

http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Art ... leId=22402 This is a disturbing trend. My own City of Fresno Fire Dept just emerged from salary negotiations and accepted a 2.5% wage CUT for the next year. Other city unions got a 3% cut. The Police Union is holding out for now. I knew this was coming... but it still bothers me more than enough to silence the urge to spout "I told you so." Hyperinflation is on its way too... soon the pension that I DO have will buy no more than pizza and beer.

That's a sobering report. Not that I don't see several of those a day.

What I see starting to happen is an increasing number of doomy reports. It used to be just the "fringe". Starting to spread now. Maybe it's just the debt ceiling "crisis" that is all in the news, but there are more and more that are jumping on the doom wagon. At this point it is still tending to be the financial conservatives, but the ones that were previously laying low, or saying little even if they felt differnent in private, are now coming out more forcefully.

In my area, the teacher unions have agreed to no increase in pay and the teachers will have to pay 2.5% more towards their health insurance premiums, along with increased deductibles.

military has no pay increase for at least the next year. All Civilian Federal Employees have a pay freeze for 2 years I think, meaning you also can't get a promotion for the most part.