The top 10 biggest U.S. cities on the brink of pension bankruptcy

According to Business Insider, here are the top 10 U.S. cities whose pension obligations will soon collapse: (this article was originally published in 2010, so we have updated the "years" to reflect 2013)

#1 Philadelphia - Unfunded liability of $9 billion, $16,696 per household, only 1 year before the pension accounts are empty

#2 Chicago - Unfunded liability of $44.8 billion, $41.966 per household, money runs out in 4 years

#3 Boston - Unfunded liability of $7.5 billion, $30,901 per household, money runs out in 4 years

#4 Cincinnati - Unfunded liability of $2 billion, $15,681 per household, money runs out in 5 years

#5 St Paul - Unfunded liability of $1.4 billion, $13,686 per household, money runs out in 5 years

#6 Jacksonville - Unfunded liability of $4 billion, $12,944 per household, money runs out in 5 years

#7 New York City - Unfunded liability of $122 billion, $38,866 per household, money runs out in 6 years

#8 Baltimore - Unfunded liability of $3.7 billion, $15, 420 per household, money runs out in 7 years

#9 Detroit - Unfunded liability of $6.4 billion, $18,643 per household, money runs out in 8 years

#10 Fort Worth - Unfunded liability of $2 billion, $7,212 per household, money runs out in 8 years

Note that some of these numbers were actually optimistic. Detroit, for example, was predicted to run out of money in 2021, yet it already declared bankruptcy in 2013. What you are looking at here is a looming cascade of municipality bankruptcies over the next 10 - 20 years.

Cascading financial collapse

Nobody saves in America anymore; not cities, not states and of course not the federal government which Obama has brought to the astonishing debt level of $16 trillion (it was only $8 trillion when he first took office). It begs the question: If the cities bail out the pensioners, and Washington bails out the cities, who's going to bail out Washington and its exploding debt?

The answer, of course, is nobody. Central banks all around the world are already sitting on far too much U.S. debt that's being eroded by the hour as the Federal Reserve commits "quantitative easing" that dilutes the global dollar supply. They aren't going to take on trillions more to bail out a nation now seen as a global imperialist bully that runs NSA spying on its own allies while routinely engaging in economic espionage through currency manipulations.

The American government is widely hated throughout the world today. Most nations probably wouldn't mind seeing the USA collapse into financial oblivion. And within a few years, they may just get their wish.

"On average, pensions consume nearly 20 percent of municipal budgets," writes Anthony Flint of The Atlantic Cities. "But if trends continue, over half of every dollar in tax revenue would go to pensions, and by some estimates in some cases would suck up 75 percent of all tax revenue."