Carbon County's retirement fund is hale and hearty despite a still-shakey economy, experts told commissioners Thursday.

"The pension plan is 97 percent funded, which is excellent," said actuary Henry E. Stiehl, Certified Employee Benefit Specialist with the Hay Group, Inc., the county's pension fund managers.That's better than most counties, he said."Your fund, especially after the changes you made in the past year, is in excellent condition," Stiehl said.One big boost was the sale in July 2010 of the county nursing home at Weatherwood to Guardian Elder Care of Brockway for $11,050,000. That move cut the number of people enrolled in the fund to by 39 percent, and the total salaries by 40 percent, Stiehl said. "It's quite an impact."The total liabilities decreased correspondingly by just under 5 percent, from $70.6 million to $67.2 million.The good bill of health is commendable, considering the current state of economic affairs, Stiehl said.The current market turmoil reflects "a general lack of certainty, and a real lack of confidence in everything. A lack of confidence in our governmental leaders in Washington, the economy in general, what's going on in Europe," said Mark R. Gensheimer, president of the county's investment manager, C.S. McKee, L.P., Pittsburgh.He said that while C.S. McKee experts don't expect a "double-dip recession," they do believe the economy will "continue to bumble and stumble along for awhile."Debt and unemployment are the double barrels of the economic problems, Gensheimer said. Debt is a plague worldwide, and "unemployment will continue remain high for quite some time. The bottom line is companies are surviving with fewer employees," he said.The financial crunch has prompted people to curtail spending. But that means less money is flowing into the economy, county Treasurer Ron Sheehan observed."The general public is just paralyzed they don't know what to do," he said.But the bright side is that the county's retirement fund is healthy.County Controller Robert Crampsie said the county disbursed a total of $246,679.96 in monthly benefits in August, gave $11,796.10 in refunds and $23,122.72 in Option 4 benefits, for a total of $281,598.78.The portfolio value as of Aug. 31 was $60,125,042, he said.Despite the economic turmoil the fund lost about $1.1 million in May its year-to-date performance appears to have evened out, Crampsie said."As of the end of August, we're very close to being where we were in the beginning of the year," he said. "We're down about 1 percent. So after all that volatility, that roller coaster, we're pretty close to being back where we started."