Autor: Edward Siedle

Around the world, there are millions of workers and retirees who are counting upon pensions set up by corporations and governments to provide for their retirement security. These individuals believe they have been “promised” certain benefits and that promises made will be kept.

Unfortunately, many pensions are severely underfunded, i.e., not enough money has been set-aside to pay benefits promised. Further, the money in these pensions is all-too-often grossly mismanaged—what I refer to as “gross malpractice generally practiced.”

That’s right—with respect to pensions, “prevailing practice” generally amounts to “gross malpractice.”

To make matters worse, there are legions of actuarial and benefit consulting firms globally that make handsome livings advising pension plan sponsors on how to legally (and sometimes not-so-legally) improve their bottom-lines by slashing or outright eliminating their pension obligations, i.e., how to break the retirement promises they have made.

As a result, pensioners cannot count upon their plans to honor benefit promises; to the contrary, they can only count upon sponsors doing what’s best for their bottom-lines, i.e., working diligently to screw workers out of promised retirement benefits.

Sadly, there is virtually no one protecting pensioners from mismanagement and pension looting. Government regulators and law enforcement are either conflicted or simply not up to the task of safeguarding retirement plans from the ravages of Wall Street billionaires and plan sponsors.

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