As far as I can tell, this doesn't affect the pensions themselves. Only it's creditors
That doesn't seem to be enough. But this brought up something that I have been wondering about: If you read the economic apocalypse blogs, there's a lot of talk about these interest rate swaps coming back to bite the banks to the tune of about 450 trillion dollars. Yes, you read that right, a bazillion cadrillion dollars. The 10 year treasury bond has shot up (relatively speaking) to 3% over the last few months. Historically speaking, that's not too high, but it's my impression that these swaps aren't built with a long-term economic scale in mind, and the economic freakout blogosphere suggests that rates might start to shoot up, and the Fed won't be able to keep them down. Supposedly, these swaps were sold to a bunch of municipalities to insure them from increasing rates. Thus, we'll have a replay of the subprime mess, but on a much larger scale. It would be ironic if Detroit weasels their way out of these swaps just before they start to pay off, or more correctly, before the Federal government makes good on them on behalf of the banks.Detroit’s interest rate swaps with UBS and Bank of America were supposed to protect the city from rising interest rates. But the deal soured for Detroit when prevailing interest rates plummeted in 2008-09, causing the city’s annual payments on the swaps to rise to $50 million.