The pension fund disaster in the city of San Diego is bound to raise the question: What about L.A. and other cities? Standard & Poor's just completed a study of pension liabilities in 20 cities and discovered that the numbers look pretty good. The study measured the actuarial value of assets divided by accrued liability, coming up with something called the "mean funded ratio." The average funded ratio of the cities surveyed was 84 percent from 100 percent in 2000. (Much of the decrease was due to large investment losses in fiscals 2001 and 2002 that depressed asset values.) L.A. beat the average with 89 percent, San Jose had 90 percent and San Francisco had 104 percent. Bloomberg News columnist Joe Mysak lays it out this way:

The tables of statistics are the real meat of this report. There you can see that not everybody is in the same condition as San Diego. Milwaukee, for example, has a funded ratio of 117 percent, while San Francisco has one of 104 percent. New York City has a funded ratio of 100 percent. Those pension funds have the money they estimate they will need to pay their retirees. Philadelphia, on the other hand, has only 53 percent of the money it needs to pay its pensioners, according to S&P. Boston has only 63 percent. Chicago has only 65 percent.