There is a case to be made for home equity as the most important source of retirement funding in the United States, and this would seem to make the...
Putnam Investments President and CEO Robert Reynolds spoke on the need to address America’s lifetime income challenge at the recent Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA) conference in Chicago.
While Reynolds has spent most of his career in leadership positions in the investment management industry, his...
MIT Professor Robert Merton addresses the challenge of financing retirement income in a lecture delivered this past January.
Merton briefly discusses the financial crisis and suggests that it is unproductive to think about digressing to a financial world that preceded Glass-Steagall and financial innovation. Merton’s view is that financial engineering is indispensable in addressing the large and complex issues of pension and retirement finance.
Merton’s basic prescription for improving the general state of retirement finance includes increasing savings, working longer, taking more risk. Most would agree with the first two choices but the third—taking more risk—seems...
