JUMPIN JACK FLASH
I'm at Jack's place. The Trustees' report was supposed to be up at 11:30 a.m., and so far it's 20 minutes late.
Now it's up, here, and Snow's press release is here.
Some minor cookery in view: they bumped the two key years back one each, so they can say, look, things are gittin worse. The Trust Fund cash deficit is presumed to begin in 2017 instead of 2018, and the Fund's assets exhausted in 2041 instead of 2042. The actuarial imbalances get marginally larger, as predicted here this morning. The only question is how they jigger the assumptions, which evidently they do, albeit to minor effect.
The upshot is that very small changes in assumptions are relatively easy to defend but make the simple, albeit problematic point that the direction of change is bad.
12:30. OK, here we go. I guess you refresh your browser to catch my stream of unconsciousness as we go
