These are the top five fallacies I found in the Politico article. Five months before Congress faced a near-catastrophic standoff over the debt ceiling, with Republicans demanding restrictions to food and Medicaid programs to rein in spending, a bill that raised the cost of private retirement savings accounts to $282 billion per year was quietly signed into law. In this era of deeply divided politics, the 2022 bill known as Secure 2.0 was hailed as a bipartisan success. Tax-advantaged savings has become a staple of the American retirement system, with 60 million savers squirreling away $6.6 tr ..read more

I was inteviewed by Benjamin Guggenheim for this Politico article. Nothing I said made it into the piece. This is what I emailed to the author on November 15, 2023 which explains the real problem with the current state of private pensions and it does not have to do with more money in the system (which is a good thing) or lobbyists making laws (which is not exactly breaking news). Ben, I would be glad to discuss these issues with you any time. As it turns out the next month or so are one of the slowest times of year in my job of doing 5500 forms for small plans so I have plenty of time. The blo ..read more

So I would get this to print out on 14 instead of 32 pages here is the Politico article that I will offer my comments on in the next blog. I was contacted by the author, Benjamin Guggenheim, and we had a long phone conversation and exchanged some emails last November. Greased by lobbying and campaign cash, tax breaks for retirement savings are one thing Congress agrees on. But they also blow out the deficit and add to income inequality. Five months before Congress faced a near-catastrophic standoff over the debt ceiling, with Republicans demanding restrictions to food and Medicaid programs to ..read more

Subititled The Educaiton of a Courtroom Lawyer, John C. Tucker was a Chicago trial lawyer in the last century who, in retirement, wrote about a few of his cases while offering insights into the job. The firm had decided not to take on routine insurance-defense work lest it create a group of “insurance-defense” lawyers who would be viewed as second-class citizens. (page 4) (Many private lawyers, having long since used up the fee they collected, would have moved heaven and earth to avoid anoth3er trial by persuading their cliens to plead guilty; but to the intense displeasure of prosecutors and ..read more

Teresa Ghilarducci has been a Cassandra for the decline of Defined Benefit Plans and her new book advocates for government expanding Social Security through Guarnateed Retirement Accounts since the private sector is not doing the job of providing secure benefits for older workers. However statistics and anecdotes do not drive home that sad tale as much as the experience of small plan acturies (like me) in designing retirement plans ..read more

George Karl going on about his forty years surviving NBA divas (Carmelo Antohony, Kenyon Martin, and J. R. Smith) , clueless GMs (Wally Walker), and cancer. If make any money from this book, it’s going to my foundation, which helps cancer patients and their families navigate the ridiculoously expensive, needlessly frightening, and stupidly complicated world of doctors, hospitals, andinsurance: George Karl Foundation.org. (page xvi) Basketball was my life. Now life is my life. (page xvii) Sometimes, like at the end of games, the iso is a necessary evil. And, sometimes, the iso was the only play ..read more

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), held a hearing this morning titled “Taking a Serious Look at the Retirement Crisis in America: What Can We Do to Expand Defined Benefit Pension Plans for Workers?” A lot of talking points we have all heard before with these clips I found notable ..read more

Who will the IRS go after with its $80 billion budget boost? Judging by the new compliance questions added to the 2023 5500-SF form it may be CB/DC combo plans, 401(k) plans, and non-amenders. Even if the gateway is provided, are these complicated nondiscrimination tests being passed or has the IRS witnessed a little too much creativity in those they have audited? Maybe not an audit trigger but an interesting bit of data mining. Could this be an audit-fishing expedition to target plan sponsors with documents not in compliance with current law? Since setup documents for most small plans are ..read more

The book is subtitled “What Medicine Doesn’t Know” and these are excerpts from the Crohn’s chapter. Since I knew so little about Crohn’s, I assumed my doctors must know everything about it, which turns out not to have been the case – and forty years later it is even less the case. (page 60) Although diagnostic and therapeutic options have certainly multiplied in the seventy-five years since Crohn and Janowitz reflected on early clinical interventions, specific therapies for Crohn’s still do not exist, and available measures are still strictly supportive. (pages 61-2) First, the enteric nervous ..read more

An article by Larry Pollack, a consulting actuary with his own take, focuses on the problem: The Actuarial Standards Board (ASB), which defines professional standards for actuaries, finally acknowledged the criticisms and adopted a requirement for actuaries to calculate and disclose – starting with funding reports to be published (mostly) in 2024 – a liability measure more consistent with finance principles. The new measure provides valuable information not previously available, although it is not perfect, and, importantly, it will not affect actuarially-determined contributions or financial ..read more