The Pension Gamble

Overview

This 2018 documentary investigates the role of state governments and Wall Street in driving America’s public pensions into a multi-trillion-dollar hole. Producers Marcela Gaviria and Nick Verbitsky and correspondent Martin Smith trace how state governments have withheld pension contributions to cover shortfalls and waged risky bets on Wall Street. Smith goes inside the volatile fight over pensions in Kentucky, a state whose once-flush pension system for its police, firefighters, teachers and other public workers became one of the worst-funded in the nation.