A healthy balance sheet?

As the US municipalities grapple with the imposition of new funding standards, attention is focusing on the cost of providing healthcare provision - but are pension deficits a bigger issue?

With a diversity of state, district, and city infrastructures running separate forms of pension provision, establishing how US municipal retirement schemes are valued and funded is a tricky exercise. But it is a far from academic one as the recent investigation by US watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), into New Jersey's state employee pensions funding crisis proves.

The New Jersey state treasury confirmed that the investigation to see if municipal bond investors have been