Search the News Archive

Overview of The Wall Street Journal's Retirement-Planning Guide

Excerpt: This guidebook is ... a blueprint for building a successful retirement. We'll show you how the various pieces -- retirement savings, Social Security, relocation, new careers, volunteer work, estate planning, health care, leisure and more -- come together as you create your plan for a personally fulfilling retirement.

ERIC Letter to the Wall Street Journal in Response to Cash Balance Article of August 15, 2006

Excerpt: ERIC submitted the ... letter to the Wall Street Journal for inclusion on August 15. The Journal subsequently declined to publish the letter.

The Wall Street Journal's Contribution to the Fiduciary Argument

"[I] was particularly dismayed to read the August 12 WSJ editorial entitled 'The Borzi Savings Bomb,' with the tagline: 'An Obama appointee concocts a fictional crisis that will have real costs.' Apparently, in today's highly charged political environment, even the Journal editorial staff is unable to look beyond partisanship to examine an important issue on its merits, alone. As the title and tagline suggest, WSJ editors are upset with Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis Borzi's attempt to provide IRA investors with the same protections that other retirement savers have in pension plans including defined benefit plans, 401(k)s, and 403(b)s."

On Money Market Funds, False Promises and Faulty Premises from The Wall Street Journal

"There's little evidence to support the Journal's claims that its favored proposal for money market funds -- forcing them to float their per-share price -- would enhance financial stability. As the financial crisis demonstrated, floating-value funds are not immune to runs. Instead, this 'solution' would deprive investors and the economy of an efficient, diversified, well-regulated, and transparent tool for cash management, and a crucial channel for financing businesses, state and local governments, and nonprofit institutions."

American Academy of Actuaries' Letter to the Wall Street Journal on Recent Pension Article (PDF)

1 page. Excerpt: The article 'Tracking the Numbers,' by Ellen Schultz on Nov. 4, could have left your readers with an incorrect understanding of the cash balance plan pension plan being discussed. When Bank of America employees were given the option to transfer money from their 401(k) plans to the bank's new cash balance retirement plan, their principal became guaranteed. While most stock investors lost money over the past few years, Bank of America employees lost none of the principal in[.]

Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal from NCTR's Executive Director (PDF)

1 page. The letter is written in response to New York City school's Chancellor Joe Klein's Essay on Pension Funds.

Wall Street Journal v. The Facts on Money Market Funds: Response to Wall Street Journal Feb. 3 Editorial

Excerpt: ICI President and CEO Paul Schott Stevens sent the following Letter to the Editor to the Wall Street Journal on February 3, 2010. Your editorial, 'The SEC v. Investors' (Feb. 3), got it wrong. Wrong on the facts, wrong on the analysis, wrong on the strength of the SEC's rules, and wrong on the mutual fund industry's commitment to its investors.

Wall Street Journal Interviews Experts on Solutions to the 'Nest-Egg Blues'

Excerpt: For tips on how to regain financial and emotional equilibrium in scary economic times, The Wall Street Journal convened a panel at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The participants were: John L. McKeever III, a chartered financial consultant ... Olivia S. Mitchell, professor of insurance and risk management at the Wharton School [and] Jack L. VanDerhei, associate professor at the Fox School of Business and Management at Temple University...

Wall Street Journal and Credit Suisse 'Union Pension Bomb' Is Long on Drama, Short on Insight (PDF)

"The May 15, 2012 Wall Street Journal editorial entitled 'The Union Pension Bomb' and the Credit Suisse report to which it refers may provide an eye-catching headline, but it contains numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading statements regarding multiemployer plans.... Rather than acknowledging the long-term nature of pension obligations and the market fluctuations that will produce periodic and transitory periods of over- or underfunding, [the editorial] chose to capitalize on the anomalies produced by artificially low interest rates, overly influenced by monetary policies intended to stimulate low-cost borrowing, at the expense of those institutions and individuals whose long-term financial survival is dependent on savings and historically dependable fixed income instruments. The sensationalism of these conclusions may play well to those whose interests are served by eliminating any sense of corporate responsibility to the workers whose efforts are as much a contributing factor to the companies' success as those who provide the capital, but no one should be fooled by this shameless and opportunistic characterization of the current rates as market driven 'risk-free' rates, appropriate for such conclusions."

Wall Street Journal is Wrong About Public Pensions

"[CalPERS] relied on IMPLAN, the most widely employed and accepted regional economic analysis software for predicting economic impacts.... [They input] total benefits paid in California (more than $12.7 billion) into IMPLAN to arrive at a 2.39 economic multiplier and the 113,664 jobs created.... CalPERS benefits (retirees spending their pensions) returned $10.85 in economic activity to California for each taxpayer dollar (public funds) contributed to the system. The total economic revenue generated by CalPERS benefits was more than $30.4 billion."