This week, I made a presentation to an estate planning group in Mobile. The speaker prior to me either wasn’t aware of his allotted time or didn’t care, as he went extremely long. So, I truncated my prepared remarks by about 10 minutes to keep the conference somewhat close to on schedule. No worries; when you make as many talks as I do, you learn to make adjustments on the fly.
Obviously, you can’t adequately cover every aspect of the $19 trillion US economy, let alone future scenarios, in what had become a 35 minute presentation, okay, maybe 40. As a result, I had a number of people ask me questions during the break which followed my remarks. While most people wanted to talk about the upcoming election, two wanted to know my thoughts on unfunded public sector projected benefit (pension) obligations (PBOs), and their potential negative impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Really? 2?
Of all the many challenges facing the US economy over the next 3 decades, unfunded public sector PBOs are certainly one of them. I suppose your vocation determines the importance of a particular issue, and there were a fair number of CPAs in attendance. So, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by the interest. However, let me just say I don’t normally get a lot of questions on the subject, let alone 2 in less than 5 minutes.
Let me give you a paraphrased amalgam of my discussions, and my comments come first: …Read On…
The opinions expressed within this report are those of John Norris as of the initial publication of this blog. They are subject to change without notice, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oakworth Capital Bank, its directors, shareholders, and employees.