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The Central States Pension Fund has no new plan to avoid insolvency, fund director Thomas Nyhan said this week. Without government funding, the fund will run out of money in 10 years, he said. At that time, pension benefits for about 407,000 people could be reduced to "virtually nothing," he told workers and retirees in a letter sent Friday. In a last-ditch effort, the Central States Pension Plan sought government approval to partially reduce the pensions of 115,000 retirees and the future benefits for 155,000 current workers. The proposed cuts were steep, as much as 60% for some, but it...

If you thought Obamacare was terrifying, just wait until you read about what President Obama's regulatory agencies are planning to do with your retirement savings. According to an alarming report in the Wall Street Journal, government regulators at the Labor Department will be implementing new rules at the end of the year that will eventually force private retirement investments into government accounts. How? By making private investment options, specifically IRAs, too burdensome, a liability and expensive. Bolding is mine.

President Barack Obama will pitch some new proposals to expand access to retirement savings accounts and revisit some old ones when issuing his budget next month. [...] The White House says Obama's proposals, if enacted, would provide more than 30 million people access to a retirement account. The biggest chunk of that increase would occur through legislation requiring employers that don't offer a retirement plan to automatically enroll their workers in an Individual Retirement Account. The employers that did so would get a tax credit of $3,000 to help them offset the administrative expense. The proposal was also part of...

A battle is shaping up over the soul of your retirement account. On one side are those who say you, the individual buyer, are smart enough to navigate your own investments. Others fear without stronger rules to protect you, you'll be at the mercy of advisers who put their interests ahead of yours. That's the rationale behind a new rule proposed by the Department of Labor (DoL) that requires strict new standards for every retirement investment counselor. Many see this as another government overreach that assumes we're too dense to sensibly navigate our accounts without federal hand-holding, giving rise to...

Tony James and Teresa Ghilarducci are unlikely allies. He is president of Blackstone, the giant private equity firm; she’s a labor economist who has long advocated replacing 401(k)’s with a universal, federally managed saving plan.But the two have teamed up to push what they are calling Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, a government-sponsored plan that would require participation and contributions from any employer without its own 401(k). They both view the 401(k) defined contribution retirement system as a faulty experiment that covers too few workers, generates inadequate savings and replaces too little income in retirement.

Companies with corporate pensions will end up paying a price if a sweeping budget and debt deal proposed by Congress becomes law. The House of Representatives is expected to pass legislation as soon as Wednesday that would eliminate the risk of a government default until after 2016 and increase government spending for the next two years. But the plan proposes steep increases to fees that companies pay to the nation's pension insurer, to help fund the added budget spending. According to the proposed budget, companies that have defined benefit pension plans would have to increase the fees they pay to...

Aesop would have had a straightforward explanation for why some people just can’t manage to save up for retirement: Some people are born ants—industrious and in possession of great willpower—while others are grasshoppers, living only for today. Millennia later, sorting workers into personality-specific boxes is still the preferred way of thinking about how to get people to put more money into savings. An otherwise thoughtful survey of over 1,000 individuals and interviews with 50 people by the MetLife Mature Markets Institute identifies no fewer than 10 different variations on the grasshopper: There are “Snoozers,” “Oversleepers,” “Stewers,” “Brewers.” And then there...

If you haven't taken it upon yourself to start saving for retirement, you could already be in trouble. Even worse, you could be part of a national crisis that's brewing under everyone's radars. In an earnings call Thursday, Blackstone president and COO Tony James articulated the problem and its origins. "I have the view that the hidden crisis in America that no one is talking about is what's going to happen with all of these 20, 30, 40-year-olds who no longer have corporate pension funds of defined benefit," he said. "So, they have got 401(k)s and they are making little...

The United States government could start seizing 401(k) plans, says one economist who believes a recent Supreme Court ruling sets the stage for Washington to initiate any such plans. Economist Martin Armstrong published a blog post Monday that took a look at the recent Tibble v. Edison case. The court concluded that employers have an obligation to protect their workers’ 401(k) plans from mutual funds that provide deplorable returns. Armstrong thinks this could give the federal government the arsenal to begin seizing private funds and take companies to court if mutual funds perform poorly. This comes as the Obama administration...

Is Jonathan Gruber — the MIT economist who seemingly dropped out of public view after he was caught on camera bragging about how he and other Obamacare architects misled the American public — now advising the Department of Labor? No evidence indicates that he is, but the authors of DOL’s sweeping new seven-part group of regulations that would sharply curtail choices of assets and investment strategies in 401(k)s, IRAs, and other savings plans appear to share Gruber’s mindset on the “stupidity of the American voter” (a revelation that Rich Lowry aptly described as “an unvarnished look into the progressive mind,...

Got $1 million in your 401(k)? Some savers might be surprised how feasible that savings goal is if they put their mind — and their money — to it. Of course, if you don’t have $1 million saved, you’re definitely not alone. Just 0.42 percent of all 401(k) participants in the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s database had $1 million or more in their account at the end of 2013. EBRI’s data covers 26.4 million savers. Similarly, just a tad more than 72,000 retirement savers, or 0.56 percent of the 13 million plan participants in its database, had $1 million or...

A new federal study says many workers in employer-funded pension plans that fail could see their benefits reduced under the current system of government support. The study was released Wednesday by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., the federal agency that insures pensions for about 41 million Americans. It found that about half of employers in so-called multi-employer pension plans that fail in the near future will receive reduced payouts. …

Under the false pretense of calling for new and tougher so-called fiduciary standards for financial brokers, advisers and retirement plan representatives, the White House once again horned in on Wall Street’s compensation formulas. However, what the president surely knows is that a vast majority of retirement plans — IRAs and 401(k)s — are in simple fee-based products like mutual funds. The commission-based accounts are for those who prefer to direct their brokers in certain purchases inside some of their retirement products. The key to the White House’s interference is in its nuanced language. Currently, a broker may make a recommendation...

On Feb. 2, 2015, on the heels of the State of the Union Address, the Obama Administration released its budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year, accompanied by the Treasury Department's General Explanation of the Administration's Fiscal Year 2016 Revenue Proposals (colloquially known as the Greenbook).[1] Given the percentage of his previous proposals that have been passed and the newly-elected Republican majority in both houses of Congress, the vast majority of the proposals in the Greenbook are unlikely to become law during President Obama's last two years in office. However, they are worth noting, as they identify the focus points...

President Obama is delivering a speech about retirement investing today: Just terrific… But wait, it gets better!Obama’s speech included this warning: Ha! Sound familiar? Anyone? … Anyone? That’s it!But there’s more:

The Obama administration is proposing tougher restrictions on brokers who manage Americans’ retirement accounts, reigniting a confrontation with the financial services industry over rules affecting trillions of dollars in 401K and other savings accounts. The change would put brokers—who sell stocks, bonds, annuities and other investments—under the stricter requirements for registered financial advisers when they handle clients’ retirement accounts. In a long-anticipated move, the Labor Department is making the proposal Monday to the White House Budget Office. After an internal review, it likely will be put out for public comment for several months. Obama was scheduled to address the AARP...

RUSH: It's a story from the website Watchdog.org, and the headline: "Obama's Budget Targets Your Retirement Accounts." I can't recall the number of times that I have mentioned casually, forcefully, predicted directly over the course of the years that, as this government continued to expand and spend money it didn't have and print money it needed, that at some point it was gonna have to go get money. You can't just rely on fake money that's printed. They're gonna have to get more. They're gonna target money, and I warned everybody, "They're gonna they're gonna come after your pensions, and...

With the release of its 2016 spending blueprint Monday, the Obama White House officially signaled its intent to use retirement policy to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The proposed 10-year budget, which allots $4 trillion in spending for fiscal year 2016, will attempt to cap tax-deferred saving in 401(k) and Individual Retirement Accounts at about $3.4 million. That amount of savings generates more than $200,000 of income annually in retirement when annuitized, an income stream that should be sufficient for most, according to the Obama administration’s rationale behind the proposal. The vast majority of Americans would never feel the...

U.S. stocks sank on Thursday, erasing all and more of the previous day's rally, as investors bypassed U.S. corporate earnings and economic reports to focus on global concerns, including Europe's softening economy. "We've added global growth concerns on top of other headline risks, (such as) air strikes, Ebola," said Sean McCarthy, regional chief investment officer for Wells Fargo Private Bank. Ahead of Wall Street's start, data showed a 5.8 percent drop in German exports in August, adding to downbeat numbers that had German industrial orders and output falling as well. "Europe's growth is weak, and close to going into recessionary...

U.S. stocks slid on Tuesday, with the Dow industrials posting their fourth loss in five sessions. Traders said the selling was kicked off by remarks from a Polish official warning about the potential for Russia to invade Ukraine. But traders said the scope of the declines reflected low volumes and a lack of other news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 139.81 points, or 0.84%, to 16429.47. The S&P 500 lost 18.78 points, or 0.97%, to 1920.21 and the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 31.05 points, or 0.71%, to 4352.84. "This hit the tape, and all of a sudden the market...

You may already be familiar with the catchy bit of investment advice to “sell in May and go away.” Historically, the first day of May kicks off a seasonally weak period for stock prices that lasts through October. That also means that most of the gains in the U.S. stock market come from the period between the start of November and the end of April. This implies a shockingly simple strategy: Invest in an index fund during November through April and then switch into money market funds until the next November, and you’ll be much better off than an investor...

In December, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees how investments are sold, proposed what it calls Cards, an electronic system that would regularly collect data on balances and transactions in brokerage accounts. But some critics think it could endanger the privacy and security of investors’ confidential data. Under Cards (which stands for Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System), Finra would collect—probably weekly—a record of activity at all of the more than 4,100 brokerage firms nationwide.

After more than twenty years of trying, there’s no way to avoid the following conclusion: The gun manufacturers of America cannot be swayed by reason. This past week alone, we saw just how true this statement has become. On Tuesday morning, a gunman opened fire at a FedEx facility in Kennesaw, Georgia wounding six people before being shot and killed himself. Kennesaw is famous for being the Georgia town where every household is mandated to own at least one gun. Although the law is not officially enforced, it is estimated that roughly 50% of town residents do, in fact, own...

Questions about 401Ks.

Where to find the fees charged by your 401(k) retirement funds? "Sorry to say there isn't an easy answer to where to find all expenses on retirement accounts, which is definitely part of the problem," says Jennifer Erickson, co-author of a new study of 401(k) fees by the Center for American Progress. Your quarterly statement may not show all the fees and "can be even more confusing," Erickson says. Most fees —more than 80 percent of them — are covered by a plan's "expense ratio." The expense ratio includes recurring fees you're charged when you invest in a fund. The...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. Read Companies bracing for 1-2 retirement punch . According to the report,...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. Read Companies bracing for 1-2 retirement punch . According to the report,...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of...

(Reuters) - The savings of the European Union's 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says. The EU is looking for ways to wean the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment. "The economic and financial crisis has impaired the ability of the financial sector to channel funds to the real economy, in particular long-term investment," said the document, seen by Reuters. The...

When President Barack Obama introduced a new retirement savings plan during his State of the Union speech last month, the Republican response was uncharacteristically muted. Although Republicans were upset about the president’s new reliance on executive authority to push his agenda, they had few harsh words about the details of the retirement idea. Dubbed MyRA, Obama’s initiative is intended to allow workers who do not have access to other workplace savings plans to open an account overseen by the government that would invest in low-risk Treasury bonds. It’s a relatively modest proposal, one that would be entirely voluntary for employers...

<p>When you hear, “Hello, I’m from the federal government and I want to help you manage your retirement savings,” the best advice is to run away, as fast as you can.</p>

Prepare For When The New MyRA Becomes "TheirRA" Personal_Finance / Pensions & Retirement Feb 10, 2014 - 06:47 PM GMTPeter KrauthBy: Money_Morning Personal Finance Peter Krauth writes: In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled something new: a retirement savings account to "help" Americans build a nest egg, coining it the "MyRA." Something immediately felt wrong about the proposal... but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I researched the new MyRA and found details to help you understand just how it works. But I also saw some potential dangers there that you need to prepare...

In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama unveiled something new: a retirement savings account to "help" Americans build a nest egg, coining it the "MyRA." Something immediately felt wrong about the proposal... but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I researched the new MyRA and found details to help you understand just how it works. But I also saw some potential dangers there that you need to prepare for now... What MyRA Really Means Like most government programs, getting to their essence can take some sifting. So I've distilled here what I think are the...

**SNIP** The biggest change will be a new emphasis on retirement readiness, rather than simply getting workers to join a plan and contribute. The idea is to focus on actual retirement outcomes, and it reflects apprehension about the large number of Americans who are approaching retirement unprepared. If that's something you're worried about, it turns out your boss shares your concern. The 2013 Retirement Confidence Survey by the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) found that just 13 percent of workers are very confident they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement. And a 401k benchmarking survey released last...

AOL became the latest company to blame Obamacare for cutting back on employee benefits. The tech firm will now pay its 401(k) company match only to employees who are active on Dec. 31 of that year, as opposed to in their paychecks throughout the year. So those who leave the company before the end of the year will forfeit the match.

Hold on to your wallets, folks. Without a powerful intervention, California may soon become the first big domino to fall in America's public pension debacle. To help prevent catastrophe, the California Public Policy Center (CPPC) has just made public a new database detailing the size and scope of the state's outsized expenditures on public employees — the largest ever compiled in California. Legislators and voters should take note, because California can't afford another round of fact-free partisan warfare. As recently reported in the New York Times, the fate of California cities such as Desert Hot Springs — where civic bankruptcy...

Simply put, the new myRA program put forward by Obama is at best a sucker's deal… or worse, it's a first step toward the nationalization of private retirement savings. (Note: If you haven't yet heard of myRA, I'd strongly suggest you read this excellent overview by my colleague Dan Steinhart.)Even before the new myRA program was announced, there had been whispers about the need for the US government to assume some risk for US retirement accounts. That's code for forced conversion of private retirement assets into government bonds.With foreigners not buying as many Treasuries and the Fed tapering, the US...

Real life isn’t always a “Field of Dreams,” where “if you build it, they will come.” Instead, there are times when you build it, and they go “Ho-hum,” and mostly ignore you. So while any effort to encourage increased retirement savings among workers deserves to be applauded — arguing against increased savings is like disputing the value of parenthood and apple pie — it’s hard to see President Obama’s myRA program achieving most of its goals, because once you get past what he described during the State of the Union address, it appears to be a lot of wishful thinking....

You didn't think the US could at first slowly, and then all of a sudden, expropriate retirement accounts and invest them in the "no risk, guaranteed return" MyRA Ponzi scheme introduced by Obama during the State of the Union address without lots of behavior-modifying indoctrination in the "friendly press" first now did you? Sure enough, here is the first major propaganda salvo, coming from none other than the US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, which will be published tomorrow across the McClatchy media empire. * * * Just out from the US Treasury Department, "In an op-ed to be published in...

RUSH: Well, now, that's fascinating you mention that, because that's the next item up in my Stack of Stuff and I talked about this weeks ago, maybe even months ago when Tom "Dung Heap" Harken proposed this. Now, before you condition Alicia, let me refer to what she's talking about. It's Mark Hemingway in the Washington Examiner: " Will the government outlaw your 401(k) plan? It seems like an absurd possibility, yet earlier this month two Democratic senators, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., held a hearing on Capitol Hill exploring the possibility of doing exactly that....

Some experts are concerned that the Obama Administration is poised to begin forcing Americans to stock their retirement accounts with low-return government bonds. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, told Bloomberg News that his new regulatory agency was mulling a move to control the $20 trillion that Americans have invested for retirement. He specifically mentioned 401(k) plans and IRAs. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring,” Cordray told Bloomberg reporter Carter Dougherty in January. Cordray’s seemingly stray comment was largely ignored by mainstream and financial media, but won the attention of fund managers and economists. SNIP...

In his first term, Obama managed to get his paws on health care, banking, energy, student loans, the auto business, and more. Now he has his sights set on your 401(k). The left has had its eye on retirement savings for years, but so far takeover attempts have been rebuffed. One egregious attempt was the proposal, following the 2010 financial crisis, to "safeguard" retirement savings by requiring that they be rolled over into Treasury bonds. Had this legislation succeeded, it would have appropriated all or part of the retirement savings of millions of Americans. The funds would have been used...

Big Momma Barnhardt has an example of a form letter to send to your HR monkey to request that you can move your money to a company you trust. Trust being a relative term. Who should care? Anyone with a retirement fund but especially folks with all their eggs in one basket. People who have worked at the same company for a while are likely to have all their eggs in one basket. Enron you say?

Financial QUESTION: Obama and Democrats Trying To SEIZE Retirement Accounts (IRAs, 401Ks) ? Aug 9, 2013 I want to know what other Free Republic Members know about this H.R. 2035: Automatic IRA Act of 2013 I got an e-mail stating: "Obama & BIG Government Are Planning To Seize Retirement Accounts!" President Obama’s FY2014 Budget Plan brings us one Large step closer to De-Privatizing IRA’s & 401k’s. Much like Obamacare, Obama’s “Automatic IRA” will force employers with 10 employees or more, to “automatically” enroll their workers in the new Government run accounts. Obama’s Automatic IRA will be managed by the Social...

This week, I had a piece in the magazine arguing that retirement is trouble. That's a golden oldie for those of you who've been reading a while; my favorite evergreen topic is haranguing my readers to save 15-20% of their income, or fer goshsakes at least 10%, towards retirement. (I mean it guys. You need to save more.) But this piece had an interesting peg: Republic Services, Inc. is in the middle of an epic battle with the Teamsters International over the pension plans that cover their workers. Up until recently, Republic teamsters have been covered by the rather notorious...

Yesterday, I linked Liz Peek’s column from The Fiscal Times pointing out that Barack Obama’s new budget has oddly stringent caps on tax-deferred savings in IRAs and 401Ks. Liz asked why Obama wants to punish savers. Today, Allen Sloan asks in the Washington Post why Obama wants twice as much in retirement benefits than the rest of Americans can build in tax-deferred savings, at least under the budget Obama proposes: For starters, the point at which Obama wants to eliminate the ability of you and your employer to deduct contributions to your retirement account isn’t actually the $3.4 million in his...

How many times have you read financial-advice stories lecturing you to max-out on your IRA, save as much as you can in your 401(k), and even pay taxes now to change your regular IRA into a Roth IRA that will be tax-free until you die? Well, be careful how much you save. That's the message in President Obama's budget for fiscal 2014, which for the first time proposes to cap the amount Americans can save in these tax-sheltered investment vehicles. The White House explanation is that some people have accumulated "substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of...

The National Deficit, along with the lack of demand for Treasury Bonds, leaves the government with no other option!And what you don’t know can hurt you!Goldworth Financial first uncovered the early blueprint of our government’s plot to seize retirement accounts in early 2009. Since that time, we have come up with 10 Basic Questions that people have about this issue: 1. Who’s behind the plot to confiscate retirement accounts?The government takeover of private retirement accounts is a concept first drawn up by Teresa Ghilarducci, who was funded by the White House, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. President Obama’s...

Obama: ‘Prohibit’ Americans from Saving More Than $3M in Retirement Accounts April 11, 2013 By Terence P. Jeffrey Subscribe to Terence P. Jeffrey RSS President Barack Obama (CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama’s proposed budget would simultaneously compel Americans to enroll in a tax-deferred retirement account and “prohibit” them from saving more than $3 million in such accounts. That sum, Obama’s budget argues, is all that is “needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.” Under current law, American who save money in tax-deferred retirement accounts are taxed on the money in such accounts when they withdraw it--and are charged an...

The federal budget that President Obama will propose today is expected to contain a provision limiting IRA and defined contribution plan accumulations to $3 million. Alternatively, it seeks to accomplish the same goal by imposing a limit based on the cost of purchasing an annuity equivalent to the top benefit allowed for defined benefit plans. Even before the plan was unveiled, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) began analyzing its possible impact. At the same time, the proposal has been blasted as a “plan killer” by Brian Graff, Executive Director and CEO of the American Society of Pension Professionals and...