Working Life

It’s hard enough to amass enough money to retire. It’s even harder when the people charged with investing the money in an IRA charge really ridiculous fees, and you can’t trust the trustees to do the right thing.

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    Really. When I read The New York Times editorials about the economy, or the truly shallow reporting from most of the paper’s reporters, often I think: the people at The New York Times actually are dolts. They don’t understand economics–at all. But, more often, it’s worth considering–they actually believe what they write, even if […]

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    My head hurts from the absolute stupidity running rampant when it comes to debating economic facts. As in, why would Social Security even be mentioned, other than for political calculations, in the debate around the phony debt and deficit "crisis"? Part of me throws up my hands and thinks this can never be stopped–especially […]

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   Happy Days are here again, folks–uh, for the corporate bottom line. The people: not so much. Profits are up big time: While the U.S. economy staggers through one of its slowest recoveries since the Great Depression, American companies are poised to report strong earnings for the second quarter—exposing a dichotomy between corporate performance and […]

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    We have a real problem in the debate about pensions that is very closely connected to the financial implosion we’re still trying to dig our way out of: the criminals and fools on Wall Street are hiding and avoiding prosecution, or at the very least, they are managing to keep their jobs despite their […]

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   We are really going to have to push back against what the meaning of "recovery" is. I am sure you are reading the claims of "recovery" coming from various sources. Today, the OECD weighs in, via a report in The Wall Street Journal: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Thursday said the global […]

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   A few days ago, I wrote about the coming crisis of retirement that could last for decades. Here’s another example: And even as its pension fund faces this giant bulge in payouts, G.M. is not putting any new money in — the company is not required to make any contributions to the fund until […]

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   It should not surprise anyone that people are scared about the future of their retirement. Yesterday, the Financial Times had this: Anxiety about having enough income in retirement is growing, according to a new Financial Times/Harris Poll, with more than half of adults in the US, France, Italy and Spain saying they are more […]

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  It was probably pretty obvious but there is a damning report out yesterday that paints a stark picture: the collapse of the housing bubble has created a savings and retirement crisis for millions of Americans who face a bleak future.   The report (which you can get here) comes from the folks at the […]

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   The collapse of the housing market–preciptated by a bunch of greedy people who drove a speculative market over a cliff–has opened up a gasping financial wound for the vast majority of people nearing retirement. Already devoid of any real, true pensions (meaning, defined benefit pensions that guarantee a specific amount of money that a […]

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