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Nevada State Treasurer Takes on Meredith Whitney

Notable analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC earlier this month that the fiscal situation in Nevada is “terrible,” something Nevada’s State Treasurer rebukes.

“If I take Nevada’s debt and if I add in the pension liability, and I add in the benefit liability, I’m still only at 8.6 percent. I can’t speak for Ms. Whitney … but I do have to say it would be nice if she did a little homework, drilled down a little bit into what those numbers are,” Kate Marshall told CNBC Friday.

“Basically what we think happened is she [Meredith Whitney] took a PEW report, which looked at the total pension plan, but the state of Nevada is one out of 180 employers that participate in that pension plan. We only represent about one-sixteenth of that plan, and in addition our state employees pay half,” Marshall explained.

“It’s as if she said, well, a family of four makes $100,000 a year and they buy a house for $200,000, oh my goodness that’s half their income is half the cost of that house, they can’t possibly afford it. But you and I know know that’s not [an] apples-to-apples” comparison, she went on to say.

SOURCE: CNBC