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Experts, including some pioneers of the 401(k) savings plans , worry that the current retirement system is not working for many Americans. More than half of workers — roughly 55 million — don't have access to a retirement plan on the job and 29 percent of households with members age 55 and older don't have a nest egg or a traditional pension plan. Perhaps a guaranteed mandate would work better, according to an odd couple of retirement system reformers. Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School, and Hamilton "Tony" James, president and...

Nearly a third of retirees are playing chicken with one of the steepest tax penalties out there — and they are running out of time. IRS rules on so-called required minimum distributions generally kick in once you reach age 70½. For 401(k)s and other defined contribution plans, it's either when you turn 70½. or you retire, whichever is later. If you've inherited an IRA, you might also be subject to RMDs, even if your own retirement is years away. How much you need to take is usually based on the account balance at the end of the previous year, and...

snip Economist Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, says she offered assurances at union board meetings and congressional hearings that employees would have enough to retire if they set aside just 3% of their paychecks in a 401(k). That assumed investments would rise by 7% a year. snip Ms. Ghilarducci wants to ditch the 401(k) altogether. She and Blackstone Group President Tony James are recommending a mandated, government-run savings system that would be administered by the Social Security Administration and managed by investment professionals. While both are Democrats, they believe their solution has bipartisan appeal....

illary Clinton And Wall Street: Financial Industry May Control Retirement Savings In A Clinton Administration BY DAVID SIROTA @DAVIDSIROTA AND AVI ASHER-SCHAPIRO ON 10/19/16 AT 12:50 AM Blackstone's Tony James: America's Not Great at Saving While Hillary Clinton has spent the presidential campaign saying as little as possible about her ties to Wall Street, the executive who some observers say could be her Treasury Secretary has been openly promoting a plan to give financial firms control of hundreds of billions of dollars in retirement savings. The executive is Tony James, president of the Blackstone Group. The investment colossus is most...

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...