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Archive for the ‘Pensions’ Category

Most Pension Are Probably Underfunded

Posted in Pensions on November 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

How Bad is The Problem? Our last post looked into pension fund skimming. After writing it we began to wonder how underfunded the typical pension is. What we found was surprising and disconcerting. One of the big issues, which we noted in our previous post is that the PBGC (the quasi government pension insurance fund) [...]

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Raiding Pensions and the PGBC

Posted in 401k, 657969, Accounting Standards, Pensions on November 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »

As we covered in our article on pension privatization… http://counterecon.com/2008/01/11/lessons-from-privatizing-retirement-funds/ ….there has been a very large amount of money from elite interests designed to get people to support retirement privatization. This has included: Movement from pensions to the 401k Republican initiatives to privatize social security The raiding of pensions, and thus underfunding of pensions by executives, which [...]

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How Social Security Works

Posted in Pensions, Privatization, tagged on August 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Wall Street’s plan to boost their bonuses now that all of their mortgage backed securities have crashed is to steal old people’s money. George Bush, The Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation think this is a great idea. We have a different word for it. We prefer the word “disgusting.” But perhaps its a matter of [...]

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Why Didn’t Anyone Want to Hold Mortgages?

Posted in Banking, Mortgages, Pensions, Real Estate, tagged on January 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Something very instructive is how mortgages evolved over time. In the past banks and savings and loans owned and serviced mortgages in the US. After the savings and loan crisis of the 1980′s this dramatically reduced the number of savings and loans, which was really too bad because there is good evidence that savings and [...]

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How Efficient are US Labor Markets?

Posted in Economics, Markets and Efficiency, Pensions, tagged , , on January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

AbstractEfficiency is not well analyzed in respect to US labor markets. The assumption that this market, as with other US markets, is somehow efficient and that it is to use the term of conservative propaganda “a free market.” This is anything but the case and the market for minimum wage labor demonstrates why. Nothing is [...]

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Hedge Funds and SEC

Posted in Pensions, Reference Articles on January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Abstract The idea promoted by the business press is that the SEC is on the constant lookout for securities fraud. The reality is that some insider trading is investigated, but some powerful insider traders are considered too connected to touch. In general the SEC is a fake regulatory body designed to promote confidence in the [...]

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Misleading Mutual Fund Advertising Related to Privatized Pensions

Posted in Investment Advice, Pensions, Stock Market on January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Abstract The rise of mutual fund advertising is strongly related to the privatization of pensions. Its impact on investment decisions is very important to understand. As stated by John Bogle in his interview with congress, expenses continue to rise in the mutual fund industry. The rise of advertising in mutual funds is an important determinant [...]

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Argentina’s Experience with Pension Privatization

Posted in Currency, Economic History, Economics, Pensions, tagged on January 11, 2008 | 2 Comments »

Abtract A lot has been made about the privatization of retirement funds. This includes both private investment accounts and government based retirement programs. The US has had experience with privatization of retirement with plans. Most notably with the 401k replacing defined pension benefits. Unknown to most, this has resulted in very negative implications for the [...]

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