Today is the official 401(k) Day.
Albert B. Crenshaw for today’s Washington Post writes: “Business Pushing Pension Change: Firms Seek to Avoid Making Large Payments to Funds.” The article reports that as Congress returns to work from its August recess, lobbyists will be pressing for a quick overhaul of the pension funding system. According to the article, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has scheduled a hearing on this and other pension issues for Thursday.
Also regarding pensions, the Philadelphia Inquirer has this article: “Pension plans see modest increases: Managers of public-worker investments try to find the right mix of index funds and active money advisers.” The article reports that, under the direction of Alan Van Noord, chief investment officer for the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, the “$42 billion-asset fund has moved $1 billion away from private money managers into low-cost accounts tied to Standard & Poor’s stock indexes since last summer.”
“Construction unions fund new development with pension money“: the St. Louis-Post Dispatch reports. The article states that, over the past decade, “organized laborers have directed hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds to new construction and renovation in the St. Louis region.”
The Washington Times ran this op-ed by James Klein on Labor Day: “Uniting to repair pensions.” The article urges Congress to act immediately “to fix the interest rate dilemma by passing the bipartisan Pension Preservation and Savings Expansion Act introduced by Reps. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican, and Ben Cardin, Maryland Democrat” and urges the U.S. Treasury Department to “finalize rules establishing the legitimacy of cash balance and other hybrid plans.”
Finally, Robert Kuttner for Business Week has this op-ed: “The Great American Pension-Fund Robbery.” Mr. Kuttner accuses companies of employing “favorite gimmicks for creative theft of pension assets.”