5th on the Park, rendered.

Former Comptroller Alan Hevessi was brought down partly by pension placement agents, but Glen Sergeon Jr. is moving up, up, up thanks to his work as one. Mr. Sergeon has helped place millions of dollars in pension money from other states with Manhattan fund managers, a practice that got him dubbed the "Secret Agent" by Forbes magazine back in May.

Mr. Sergeon has just departed a Greenwich Village penthouse for a three-bedroom apartment in the condo tower 5th on the Park. According to city records, Mr. Sergeon paid $1.42 million for his new place on the 20th floor of the 28-story, FX Fowle-designed project. Completed in 2009 and located where Fifth Avenue meets the southern side of Marcus Garvey Park at 120th Street, 5th on the Park is the tallest apartment building in Harlem.

Mr. Sergeon's new 1,884-square-foot home offers all the modern amenities a middle-brow, new construction tower has come to offer New Yorkers of all stripes. "All apartments feature state of the art kitchens with granite counter tops, washer/dryers, central air conditioner and heating systems, cherry wood floors, oversized windows, 9 - 10' ceiling heights, marble baths with soaking tubs and custom closets," write Michael Davis and Sheree Yellin in their Halstead listing.

Also, "Views, Views, Views!" from another now-standard feature, the 132-square-foot balcony. And this being Harlem, there are almost no taxes to pay, thanks to the 421-a program.

It would seem Mr. Sergeon is using some of the $6 million he made from the Kentucky pension fund to buy his new home, though really he does not have to--he just sold the penthouse at 77 Bleecker Street for $2.695 million, according to city records. The buyer of that perch was another money man, William Lipshutz, a noted currency trader who used to head the division for Salomon Brothers, where he made hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the firm throughout the 1980s. After a brief retirement, he struck out on his own the following decade, and, in 2006, was inducted into the Trader Monthly Hall of Fame.

How rich is Mr. Lipshutz' new penthouse? "Perched above a classic village neighborhood, this quiet and tranquil penthouse is truly the perfect Greenwich Village home," declare Keith Copley and Lisa  Verdi in their Soethby's listing. The co-op has two bedrooms, a large terrace and library on the second floor, and this not being new construction in Harlem, the maintenance is a considerable $4,070 per month.

Mr. Liu will need the permission of the boards of the city's five pension funds to put his plan into action. But if that approval is forthcoming, pensioners and taxpayers alike will be able to log on to a Web site and find out which stocks the funds are buying, how the funds are performing on a daily basis and who is responsible for that performance. Some of this information currently is available, sort of, but it's not easy to access. Mr. Liu wants to change that.

"Pensioners as well as taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being invested and spent," he told the New York Post. The Web site should be up and running by 2013.

Public pensions are, of course, a hot-button issue these days. Mayor Bloomberg and others have called for drastic pension reform to avoid saddling New Yorkers with out-of-control obligations to retired city employees. If Mr. Liu's plan can add transparency to the process and allow for a more enlightened discussion about these funds, all the better.

New technology also can make pension reform less of an abstraction for taxpayers concerned about the cost of the city's pension liabilities. In any case, it's not a bad thing to allow the public to see how the pension system works. Secrecy and a notoriously opaque process facilitated the abuses carried out during State Comptroller Alan Hevesi's administration of the state pension system. If Mr. Liu's plan restores trust in the management of public pension funds, that's a good thing.

As the first wave of baby boomers turns 65 next year, many of them will be unable to retire, because their main sources of wealth -- their homes and their financial asset portfolios -- have been decimated. They'll keep their jobs, crowding young people out of employment opportunities and driving down wages. And they won't spend money, weakening consumer demand and exacerbating the problem. But it could be worse, says the report. We could be Japan:

As there are few reasons to expect significant strength in the US economy as long as savings-glut countries are preventing adequate effective dollar devaluation, yet private-sector debt deflation persists, a period of as much as five years of falling CPI is not out of the question. The vigour of the US supply side and the flexibility of its economy do not, however, make this situation comparable with the entrenched deflation of Japan - though many will say so!

So, in the name of American prosperity, we implore our elders. Retire! Enjoy your declining years! Spend your money! The future of our unemployed youth is in your hands. And to help them, you only need to do the easiest thing in the world to do in 2010 -- lose your job.

That said, it is time for the city and state to crack down on those uniformed personnel-and others on the public payroll-who benefit from loopholes that pad their pensions at great expense to the taxpayers they served.

A recent story in The New York Times offered a glimpse at the sort of pension machinations that are going to be the ruin of the city and state if they are not done away with. The newspaper reported that more than a hundred retired cops and firefighters who used to work in Yonkers are now collecting pension checks that are larger than the base salaries they made while working One of them is earning a pension of $101,333 a year, after retiring at age 44 with a base salary of $74,000.

What's astonishing is that this practice is perfectly legal. Cops and firefighters and other public employees in New York City and elsewhere routinely pile up overtime several years before retiring. This does more than just put a little extra cash in their pockets-it distorts, to their benefit, the formula on which their pension is calculated. Their future payouts are based on their overall salaries, including overtime, during their last few years of service. This gaming of the system, unintentional though it may be, must stop.

We're certainly in favor of paying public servants well, but they should be paid up front. Defined pension benefits, which entitle retired public employees to an annual payment for the rest of their lives, are a relic of the civic welfare state of postwar America. Taxpayers in the 21st century cannot, and should not, subsidize the lifestyle of public servants who often retire in their mid-40s and often embark on second careers. The state and the city must hasten the transition to 401(k) pensions, which require a contribution from workers and which pay out a certain amount upon retirement.

Here's why: The Times revealed that 22 New York City cops recently retired with pensions of more than $100,000 a year. Thirteen of these retirees were 40 years old; nine were still in their 30s. Taxpayers will be forwarding them a hundred grand a year (more, when cost-of-living adjustments are made) for the remainder of their lives.

The Times found that nearly 4,000 retired public employees earn pensions of more than $100,000 a year. Those pensions, incidentally, are exempt from state and local taxes.

This is neither fair nor just. To be sure, pension reform alone will not solve the financial problems of Albany and City Hall. But this is a place to start.