January 2023

Pensions Benefit More than Retirees, Says Report

Pensions obviously benefit retirees, their dependents and their beneficiaries. But while it may be less obvious, pensions also benefit society writ large — to the tune of trillions, with a T. The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) every two years updates its Pensionomics analysis that measures the economic “ripple effect” of payments from defined benefit plans. In “Pensionomics 2023: Measuring the Economic Impact of DB Pension Expenditures,” the NIRS quantifies the broader benefits of DB plans; namely, the economic...

US. Commissioner Peirce calls for SEC rule on cryptocurrency

Commission the authority to regulate the trading of digital commodities. If the SEC did pursue rule-making for digital assets, Ms. Peirce noted, "we would have to admit that we likely need more, or at least more clearly delineated, statutory authority to regulate certain crypto tokens and to require crypto trading platforms to register with us. And Congress might decide to give that authority to someone else." However, she argued that the SEC could "do the job well," specifically when it comes...

Should Labor Abandon Its Capital? A Reply to Critics

By: David H. Webber Several recent works have sharply criticized public pension funds and labor union funds (“labor’s capital”). These critiques come from both the left and right. Leftists criticize labor’s capital for undermining worker interests by funding financialization and the growth of Wall Street. Laissez-faire conservatives argue that pension underfunding threatens taxpayers. The left calls for pensions to be replaced by a larger social security system. The libertarian right calls for them to be smashed and scattered into individually-managed...

US. Cryptocurrency Was Sold To State And Local Pensions As ESG

Senator Katie Muth, a Board Member for the $40 billion Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) will never forget the first meeting of the pension board she attended and the ESG presentation she heard which included cryptocurrency as a solution for the un-banked in African countries. “I was really looking forward to the ESG presentation but was very confused as to how blackbox fake currency could improve the lives of people suffering from economic hardship on the continent. The...

U.S. insurers likely to increase risk tolerance, private assets – Conning

Most U.S. insurers expect to increase their investment risk tolerance, while adding to their allocations to private assets this year, amid an environment of higher volatility and rising inflation, according to a survey of U.S. life and property and casualty insurers released Tuesday by Conning, a global insurance asset management firm. Specifically, 64% of insurers responding to the survey said they expect an increase in investment risk tolerance in 2023, while 73% said risk-adjusted returns are the No. 1 investment...

Why Older Americans Regret Not Saving Early and Enough

Any Americans head into their retirement years with little rigor in their planning, and then they find themselves nursing a bundle of regrets. Those regrets are about not saving more earlier in life, not investing in long-term care or annuities, and dipping into their social security payments much too early. How widespread are those regrets, and how can people plan more smartly for their retirement? That is the focus of a new paper titled “Financial Regret at Older Ages and...

Financial regret at older ages and longevity awareness

By Abigail Hurwitz & Olivia S. Mitchell Older people often express regret about financial decisions made earlier in life that left them susceptible to old-age insecurity. Prior work has explored one outcome, saving regret, or peoples’ expressed wish that they had saved more earlier in life. The present paper extends attention to five additional areas regarding financial decisions, examining whether older Americans also regret not having insured better, claimed benefits and quit working too early, and becoming financially dependent on...

US. 32% of Savers Tapped Their Retirement Accounts Last Year to Cope With Inflation. That’s a Problem

Inflation surged in 2022, burdening consumers of all ages. If you took a retirement plan withdrawal to cope with inflation, it's imperative that you try to compensate this year. Motley Fool Issues Rare “All In” Buy Alert Higher living costs forced some people to resort to drastic measures. Lawmakers were generous with stimulus aid in 2021, and that helped many Americans cope with the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis. But a troubling thing happened as a result. Consumers suddenly found themselves flush with cash...

These 2 states account for a third of America’s public-sector pension crisis

Step forward, California and Illinois! Your state and local pension funds are so badly funded that you two states, alone, account for about one-third of the entire U.S. pension-fund crisis. California’s public-sector pensions have a staggering accounting hole of $274 billion, according to the latest report from the Equable Institute think tank. Illinois public-sector pensions are in the hole to the sum of $210 billion — and you could argue that is even more remarkable because Illinois, the U.S.’s sixth most...

U.S. State, Local Public Pensions Saw Funding Statuses Fall in 2022

The national average funded ratio for U.S. state and local public pension plans is estimated to have declined from 83.9% in 2021 to 77.3% in 2022, once all public pensions release their 2022 data, according to a recently released end-of-year report on public pensions from the Equable Institute. Equable used figures from 76.4% of the 225 retirement systems with available data that reported preliminary investment returns for their full fiscal 2022 to inform the prediction. The remaining plans with available...