CalPERS nears a record $260 billion in assets The California Public Employees' Retirement System is poised to top a record $260 billion in assets, the market value it held before the global financial crisis wiped out more than a third of its wealth. The largest U.S. public pension, with half of its money in publicly traded equities, was worth $253.2 billion on Thursday, or about 97% of the pre-recession high set in October 2007. The fund returned 13% in 2012, about the same gain as the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. "A lot of the improvements in portfolio returns is simply reflective of the return of the market," Chief Investment Officer Joe Dear said. But there is still an important lesson there, which is that when the crisis was full on, we didn't drastically reduce our equity exposure. CalPERS isn't alone in nearing previous high marks. The 100 largest public pensions in the U.S. had $2.9 trillion in assets in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That dropped to $2 trillion in 2009 and rebounded to almost $2.8 trillion as of Sept. The median funded status of state pensions, meaning how much money a system has to pay its obligations, fell to 72% in 2011 from 83% in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even with its gains, CalPERS is still short $87 billion, or about 26%, of meeting its long-term commitments, and has had to ask the state and struggling cities to contribute more. One municipality, San Bernardino, sought bankruptcy protection, saying it can't afford to pay the $13 million it owes to CalPERS. "It's certainly good news that the asset base has grown and recovered," said Bradley Belt, senior managing director of the Milken Institute and former executive director of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. The bad news is that while you've gotten back to where you were on the asset side - through a combination of good market returns and new contributions - liabilities never took a holiday. Liabilities are now a whole heck of a lot larger than they were.