Kenneth R. Solow

Will Great Investment Returns Bail

Out State Pension Plans?

Date: Thursday, April 28
Time: 8:30 a.m.
Location: Distilled Spirits Council 1250 Eye Street, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20005 (Directions here)

Kenneth R. Solow is a founding partner and Chief Investment Officer with Pinnacle Advisor Group, Inc., a registered investment advisor providing private wealth management services to more than 650 families nationally and internationally. Solow is a nationally recognized speaker and his work has been published by the prestigious Journal of Financial Planning Magazine and Advisor’s Perspectives online e-letter. Solow recently published his first book, Buy and Hold is Dead (Again): The Case for Active Portfolio Management in Dangerous Markets, a provocative and thoughtful critique of the current state of the money management industry.

• Chuck Blahous will discuss his book “Social Security: The Unfinished Work” (Here)

Where:

• American Enterprise Institute
• Directions

When:

• February 22nd
• 8:30am

Bio:

• Charles Blahous is a public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow with the New America Foundation’s fiscal policy program. He previously served President George W. Bush as deputy director of the National Economic Council. Prior to that time, Blahous served as Executive Director of the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, and as Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, with a focus on retirement income policy. Blahous previously served as Policy Director for U.S. Senator Judd Gregg, and Legislative Director for U.S. Senator Alan Simpson. His career in public service began when he was named the American Physical Society’s Congressional Science Fellow in 1989. Blahous holds a Ph.D. in computational quantum chemistry from the University of California/Berkeley (and also an A.B. in chemistry from Princeton University, where he won the McKay physical chemistry prize). He has been published in journals ranging from the Journal of Chemical Physics and Baseball Research Journal to National Affairs, Politico and the Harvard Journal of Legislation. Blahous’s two most recent books, Social Security: The Unfinished Work, and Pension Wise, were recently published by Hoover Institution Press.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available atsavingsandretirement.org.

Brookings Economic Studies fellow Douglas Elliott will discuss his research “State and Local Pension Funding Deficits: A Primer.” The financial health of state and local pension funds has been transformed from a yawn-inducing topic to a frightening one in a few short years. By some measurements, the shortfall across the nation adds up to over $3 trillion or more than two years’ worth of state and local tax revenues. (More info available here.)

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

ICI Senior Economist Peter Brady will discuss his research “A Look at Private-Sector Retirement Plan Income After ERISA.” Among his findings are that retirement income generated by private-sector retirement plans has become more prevalent — not less prevalent — since the passage of ERISA in 1974, and this is true across all income groups.

If you plan on coming please RSVP with ICI’s Maria Castellon (those who don’t RSVP can still attend, they will simply need to sign in). Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Seth Richards-Shubik, Ph.D., will present “Healthy Life Expectancy by Education: Estimates and Implications for Retirement Age Policy.” His research focuses on two themes within health economics. One area is network effects in health behaviors and medical decision-making, with related work on broader informational issues such as advertising. The other area is health disparities in the U.S., which includes work on the determinants of educational differences in mortality and the role of medical innovation in the growth of the racial gap in infant mortality.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Mark J. Warshawsky, Ph.D., will present “A Proposal for Retirement Plan Reform.” A preponderance of evidence from studies of retirement preparedness, employer commitment to retirement plans, and the troubled future of Social Security, indicates that we need to take a stronger stance in the United States to ensure the benefit adequacy of retirement plans. At the same time, we should be realistic and prudent, building incrementally upon a voluntary system that has been quite successful to date, keeping the interest of employers to sponsor retirement plans, rather than creating whole new untried institutions.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Employee Benefit Research Institute research director Jack VanDerhei will speak on the subject of retirement income preparation and future prospects.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Fidelity Senior Vice President for Policy Development and Market Planning Pamela Everheart will speak on the subject of “The impact of financial guidance on plan participants.”  Sue Guerzon will also join us to provide a guided tour of some of Fidelity’s online educational tools.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Barbara Butrica

On Tuesday, June 29, 2010, the Savings and Retirement Forum will be held at the Urban Institute (2100 M Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20037)  [Directions to UI], at 8:30am.

International Monetary Fund technical assistance adviser Mauricio Soto and Urban Institute senior research associate Barbara A. Butrica will present their paper “Will Automatic Enrollment Reduce Employer Contributions to 401(k) Plans?,” which is available here.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. More information is available at savingsandretirement.org.

Mr. Gokhale

CATO senior fellow Jagadeesh Gokhale will talk about his new book “Social Security: A Fresh Look At Policy Alternatives.”

Many of us suspect that Social Security faces eventual bankruptcy. But the government projects its future finances using outdated methods. Employing a more up-to-date approach, Jagadeesh Gokhale here argues that the program faces insolvency far sooner than previously thought. To assess Social Security’s fate more accurately under current and alternative policies, Gokhale constructs a detailed simulation of the forces shaping American demographics and the economy to project their future evolution. He then uses this simulation to analyze six prominent Social Security reform packages – two liberal, two centrist, and two conservative – to demonstrate how far they would restore the program’s financial health and which population groups would be helped or hurt in the process. Arguments over Social Security have raged for decades, but they have taken place in a relative informational vacuum; “Social Security” provides the necessary bedrock of analysis that will prove vital for anyone with a stake in this important debate.

If you plan on coming please RSVP. Coffee, juice, and pastries will be served. Please feel free to pass this along to others who you feel might be interested in attending.

The purpose of the Forum is to bring together academics, interested industry professionals, policy wonks, and government staffers who work on issues related to Social Security, pensions, savings, and general retirement issues for a monthly seminar and an annual half-day conference. Our website, www.savingsandretirement.org contains the dates of future meetings, links to relevant papers, and a few miscellaneous links that people doing research on these issues may find useful.