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Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pension Fund Managers
mauldineconomics.com / BY JOHN MAULDIN / FEBRUARY 15, 2015
We do not have to look to Greece to find massively underfunded obligations. Here in the US we can find hundreds of examples, willingly created by politicians and businessmen who proclaim they are working for the public good. We call them pension funds, but they’re just another form of unfunded debt. A sovereign bond is a promise to pay a certain amount of money over time. A defined-benefit pension fund is a promise to pay a certain amount of income over time. The value of either is determined by the ability of the government or the pension fund (or its sponsor) to pay.
I am in the Cayman Islands as I write this letter, to speak at an alternative investment conference attended by the management of some of the largest pension funds in the US and Europe, both public and private. Being here has motivated me to write this week’s letter on the problems that pension funds face. The pension fund managers I have talked with take their fiduciary obligations seriously, and they face some serious challenges.
I was on the stage with Nouriel Roubini (who makes me come off as the optimist), and we were talking about macroeconomic risks. I was asked what other sorts of risks people should be thinking about, and I cited a recent report about how pension fund obligations had dramatically increased because of a small change in mortality tables. There has been a very steady increase in life expectancy over the last almost 100 years. It is a fairly well-defined trend. The actuarial accountants whose responsibility it is to track these things updated the life expectancy tables for a 65-year-old male, who can now expect to live an additional 21.6 years, two years longer than in the old table. I pointed out that this trend toward longevity is very well established and is likely to accelerate as new technologies and medicines become available, which means that underfunded pension plans are even more underfunded than we think.
The post Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Pension Fund Managers appeared first on Silver For The People.
Source: http://silveristhenew.com/2015/02/15/mamas-dont-let-your-babies-grow-up-to-be-pension-fund-managers/
