Excerpt: It notes that Federal Reserve data suggest the decline in the value of financial assets cost pension funds roughly $1 trillion -- almost 10 percent of their assets -- from the second quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2008, the latest period for which data are available. Given the significant further drop in asset prices since the end of the second quarter, 'it is plausible that the cumulative decline in pension assets over the past year and a half amounts to about $2 trillion,' says CBO director Peter Orszag in a blog detailing his Tuesday testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor.  MORE >>