The U.S. is a superpower in the pension fund world, controlling more than 50% of global assets, and yet a recent Financial Times article identified a $1.6 trillion dollar funding gap as a grave threat to the U.S. economy.

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For the last 15 years, as Canadian and Australian pension funds have returned on average nearly 5% per year, and often much more, their U.S. counterparts have averaged returns of only 0.5%. Given a performance level in the range of dynamic global pension funds, our funds would be a tremendous strategic asset.

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A relatively simple shift in policy would not only enable that result but in this time of crisis would allow us to use those assets as a turbocharger of a swift U.S. and global economic recovery.

According to Nicolas Firzli, Director-General at the World Pensions Council in Paris “US public pensions clearly tend to allocate substantially less to infrastructure (barely 2% of their assets) than large Canadian and Australian pension funds, which typically allocate 10% of their overall holdings to infrastructure, five times more than their US peers.”

So without raising taxes, or taking on more debt, the U.S. has a ready war chest of over $2.5 trillion to move directly into infrastructure, while simultaneously – indeed, consequently – generating higher returns for American retirees.

Thinking in terms of economic strategy, our pension fund system – when taken together with life insurance funds totals $27 trillion in ready assets – is a strength that must be deployed into infrastructure assets, catalyzing immediate growth, driving long-term productivity and opportunity, and – by its nature – creating wealth for the next generation.

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