"Public pension accounting methodologies devised by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) produce flawed results and are in urgent need of improvement, according to an independent study released by the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, wrote Hank Kim,...

Gene Kalwarski, CEO, Cheiron, a leading pension actuarial firm has penned a response to Olivia Mitchell's article regarding the multiemployer pensions crisis and the legislation that is currently before the House (H.R. 397). Gene, Peter Hardcastle and the team at...

As discussed in our previous blog post, many, if not most, public fund and multiemployer plans have injected greater risk into their investment processes by allocating significantly more assets to equities and alternatives in an attempt to best the return...

While many private sector DB pension systems have reduced risk in their portfolios as they approached full-funding, many public and multiemployer pension systems have taken on more risk trying to enhance returns to help close their pension deficits. Both public...

With the explosion of data and vast computing capabilities, machine learning and artificial intelligence are all the buzz these days. However, a serious consequence of this is the ease of producing a wonderful looking backtest that fails to deliver when...

An acquaintance of mine recently shared with me an article from The Hill, titled, “Multiemployer Pension Bailout Plan Is Fatally Flawed”. Renowned economist, Olivia Mitchell, Economics professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote the article. Much...

The primary objective in managing a defined benefit pension is the securing of the promised benefits. Asset allocation plays a significant role in accomplishing that objective. However, there are at least two schools of thought regarding how one should manage...

Mercer's study on pension de-risking that was done in conjunction with the PBGC and a plan sponsor advocacy group highlighted the following. "This de-risking trend, backed by pension industry data collected in the first phase of this study, highlighted that...

There are people who have argued with me that there is no retirement crisis. Really? There are those that claim that because only about 40% of the private sector had been covered by DB plans at their peak that today's...

We reported yesterday that the TARP and Fannie and Freddie bailouts have resulted in more than $107 BILLION in profits for the U.S. Treasury. In addition to this profit, bailouts have been beneficial in that they preserved companies and jobs,...