In a world of increasingly more negative interest rates, one group is impacted more than most: pensioners who had relied on fixed income to fund their retirement years who are slowly discovering that as pension funds are unable to meet their annual 6-7% return target, that the pensions promised to them will never materialize, or worse be haircut by 50%, 60% or more.
One such example is that of the Central States Pension Fund whose fate we have been following over the past month, and which as we reported yesterday could see the pension benefits for about 407,000 people be reduced to ‘virtually nothing.”
In a last-ditch effort, the Central States Pension Plan sought government approval to partially reduce the pensions of 115,000 retirees and the future benefits for 155,000 current workers. The proposed cuts were steep, as much as 60% for some, but it wasn’t enough. Earlier this month, the Treasury Department rejected the plan because it found that it would not actually head off insolvency. In this increasingly gloomy world for retirees everywhere, one person has come up with a modest proposal: the UK’s Lord Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell, who based on his title hardly has to worried about his own personal retirement. Turner also happens to be the former chairman of the UK Pensions Commission, and as such his opinion will be closely followed.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 05/22/2016.
Follow on Twitter
Recent Comments