Publications

- July 1, 2015: Vol. 2, Number 7

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Bring Back the Dying DB Plan: Economic consequences of failed retirement policy are too horrific to go unaddressed

by Thomas Mackell Jr.

Welcome to the Everything Boom — and, quite possibly, the Everything Bubble. Around the world, nearly every asset class is expensive by historical standards. Stocks and bonds; emerging markets and developed economies; urban office towers and American farmland; high-end housing; you name it, and it is trading at prices that are high by historical standards relative to fundamentals.

The potential of a bubble is very real in terms of the riskiness of some these assets.

Before I take you through the landscape of our future retirement scenario, let’s look for a moment into the rearview mirror at the past decade. This is the period that I would characterize as The Lost Decade — a decade where predatory capitalism wreaked its havoc on the American people.

In the years before the mortgage crisis, financial regulators often looked the other way as banks and other lenders pursued reckless activities that cost investors, taxpayers and borrowers billions of dollars. W

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