‘Retirement Heist’ Overlooked Causes of the Retirement Crisis


Uploaded on Nov 8, 2011 by NewAmericaFoundation

The decline in employer-sponsored pension and retiree health plans is a troubling trend that has eroded the retirement security of millions of Americans. Stock market losses and low interest rates have weakened pension funding, and employers say that this — combined with retiree longevity, rising costs and the need to compete globally — is forcing them to freeze pensions and cut retiree benefits.

However, Ellen Schultz, a former investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, says that employers’ practices also played a role. In her new book, Retirement Heist, Schultz contends that large companies, aided by benefits consultants and lawyers, have played a largely overlooked role in the decline of American pensions and benefits. At this November 2011 event, Schultz and other experts explored the numerous examples of companies using their pension funds and retiree benefit cuts to bolster profits and boost compensation for senior executives at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

This event was hosted jointly by the New America Foundation, the Pension Rights Center and AARP.

In this video David Certner talks with author Ellen Schultz about her new book. They are accompanied by Phyllis Borzi, Donald Fuerst, Karen Ferguson and Michael Calabrese

3 thoughts on “‘Retirement Heist’ Overlooked Causes of the Retirement Crisis

  1. I got one question about retirement.

    IF someone worked for the US Government for 50+ years. And they had NOTHING to do with the politics and the new unconstitutional crap, (some such people actually designed dams to keep the water out of your house) should they be punished by losing their pension? Do you punish the Army Corps of Engineers for Katrina’s failure, because all the people living there couldn’t be fscked to say, hey this levie built by a FARMER in the 1800’s sucks, no you want to blame USACE blindly. That’s just as bad as us blaming everyone in government as an oath breaker. It isn’t EVERYONE. But it’s the IMPORTANT ones doing this shit.

    I know your ready to wipe the floor with me… BUT
    Before you say yes, also know this, a two – hat wearing Bush appointee, removed the unlimited IFT’s for government employees. This was right before the crash or 2008. The promise of a pension is your WORD. If your going to break that, then it’s fraud, and that’s a felony, and … welp I hope you see where I am going with this. You would have to have SERVED to actually KNOW. The TSP is different than government pension, Some people, like I said 50+ years in now, have BOTH TSP and a pension. For the TSP, to get at the money (beyond a LOAN you have to pay BACK) you MUST RETIRE. For the pension to get at the money you MUST RETIRE. So I ask you, do you really want your future dam builders to be retarded kids taught in computer simulations to build dams who can’t tell the difference out in the field between 20 yards of SAND vs 20 yards of ROCK Aggregate and their retirement based on the TSP alone by itself (NO NEW PENSIONS NOW ONLY THE OLD HAVE IT) with only 3 IFT’s a month.

    3 IFT’s a month explained – You can go into G,C, S, I, F the G is Treasury bonds (yeah know where that’s going) the CSIF part goes to different stocks S&P, RUSSEL2000, etc, foreign for the I, anyway also L funds now (added recently and not doing well) The G fund is what these bastards tap into when they can’t pass a budget. I really hope you get this. So what I am saying is this bush appointee for the TSP board, a few years back said, no more unlimited trades (No “day trading” they called it) they said it costs too much for the transactions. (a lie) anyway I want you to think HOW would you invest in Stocks with only THREE trades a month, and your THIRD trade is going to be going back into the G fund.

    How do you do that with 100 to 500 point swings?

    It’s your retirement. OR maybe you should buy gold like Gerald Celente and they can steal that too, so what are you going to do? Condemn the last few good people? Cause you just made war on me it that’s your decision. There’s a lot of stuff going on in government that people don’t know about.

  2. Stepping back further, some argue Katrina was made, or enhanced and steered by Geo-Engineering (spraying crap in the sky, and energizing it with RF)

    The USACE dam builders didn’t do that. ^ !
    I didn’t clarify that 3 IFT thing either. When the government worker bails out into G fund, that’s where everyone PUTS their money when the stock and foreign markets and all that aggregate crap goes nuts. How coincidental that it also gets tapped when the government runs out of money, which also logically starts to go nuts when all the other stuff goes nuts.

    It you want things to be nuts, see what happens when G pops.

  3. The banksters need to be arrested. This is the problem, the constitution then restored. All this collected data destroyed. (ironically as it’s being cloned to harvest our asses by the numbers now, maybe we all need new names then to get off of their lists before they say there is some cyber attack (which they did))

    NOBODY CAN BE TRUSTED WITH THIS DATA

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