OldShooter
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Yes, that is the tough part. Certainly many of the pensioners relied on promises made and were/are not financially sophisticated enough to have questioned them. But they will share at least some of the pain as pension account problems are eventually dealt with.... However this works out, my heart goes out to those who were promised and worked in good faith. Hopefully some light at the end of the tunnel.
The only place I have no sympathy is with "spiking" public employees' final years' pay, hence pension basis, with lots of overtime. This is apparently a regular practice that is still going on, with supervisors actively working to create spikes for near-retirees. I'm not sure it is feasible from a legal standpoint or even from a recordkeeping standpoint but I think the excess pensions due to spiking should be recaptured as part of a public bankruptcy settlement.