Harvard survey: Businesses don't want to hire

What about Obamacare?  What about "uncertainty?"  This Harvard competitiveness survey can't be right. I'd rather trust one of those instant click-on surveys on Fox News' homepage.

America's 'Job Creators' Would Rather Do Anything But Create Jobs: Survey

By Mark Gongloff

September 8, 2014 | Huffington Post

America's capitalists take every chance they get to remind us that they are our "job creators," but it turns out that their least-favorite thing on earth to do is create jobs.

Most U.S. business leaders would rather build robots, outsource work or use part-time employees than hire workers full-time, according to a new Harvard Business School survey. Here's a nice infuriating graphic from the smarty-pantses at Harvard Business School, who are educating all of our future non-job-creators in the art of not creating jobs:

As you can see from the chart, 46 percent of our job creators would rather spend money on technology than employ humans, compared with a sad 26 percent who prefer people to robots, and another 29 percent who were confused or indifferent about the question or fell asleep while the survey taker was talking. Forty-nine percent would rather outsource than hire, compared with 30 percent who'd rather hire.

Ever notice how the stock market and corporate profits are at all-time highs, while our wages are flat and roughly half of us still think the economy is in recession? This chart helps explain it, and helps explain why workers' share of those corporate profits is near its lowest since the Truman administration.

This is also bad news for the future of the economy because it means fewer workers are getting the training they need for our super-awesome, high-tech, no-job economy, Harvard pointed out:

"Firms invest most deeply in full-time employees, so preferences for automation, outsourcing, and part-time hires are likely to lead to less skills development," the study authors wrote.

This will give business leaders, who already think we lack the necessary skills for their precious jobs, even less reason to hire us in the future.

Reich: 2013 saw huge wealth redistribution

Trickle-down economic theory vs. trickle-up economic fact.

I can't say it any better than this. Read the whole thing and get back to me with any questions!

The Year of the Great Redistribution

By Robert Reich

January 5, 2014 | Huffington Post

One of the worst epithets that can be leveled at a politician these days is to call him a "redistributionist." Yet 2013 marked one of the biggest redistributions in recent American history. It was a redistribution upward, from average working people to the owners of America.

The stock market ended 2013 at an all-time high -- giving stockholders their biggest annual gain in almost two decades. Most Americans didn't share in those gains, however, because most people haven't been able to save enough to invest in the stock market. More than two-thirds of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck.

Even if you include the value of IRA's, most shares of stock are owned by the very wealthy. The richest 1 percent of Americans owns 35 percent of the value of American-owned shares. The richest 10 percent owns over 80 percent. So in the bull market of 2013, America's rich hit the jackpot.

What does this have to do with redistribution? Some might argue the stock market is just a giant casino. Since it's owned mostly by the wealthy, a rise in stock prices simply reflects a transfer of wealth from some of the rich (who cashed in their shares too early) to others of the rich (who bought shares early enough and held on to them long enough to reap the big gains).

But this neglects the fact that stock prices track corporate profits. The relationship isn't exact, and price-earnings ratios move up and down in the short term. Yet over the slightly longer term, share prices do correlate with profits. And 2013 was a banner year for profits.

Where did those profits come from? Here's where redistribution comes in. American corporations didn't make most of their money from increased sales (although their foreign sales did increase). They made their big bucks mostly by reducing their costs -- especially their biggest single cost: wages.

They push wages down because most workers no longer have any bargaining power when it comes to determining pay. The continuing high rate of unemployment -- including a record number of long-term jobless, and a large number who have given up looking for work altogether -- has allowed employers to set the terms.

For years, the bargaining power of American workers has also been eroding due to ever-more efficient means of outsourcing abroad, new computer software that can replace almost any routine job, and an ongoing shift of full-time to part-time and contract work. And unions have been decimated. In the 1950s, over a third of private-sector workers were members of labor unions. Now, fewer than 7 percent are unionized.

All this helps explain why corporate profits have been increasing throughout this recovery (they grew over 18 percent in 2013 alone) while wages have been dropping. Corporate earnings now represent the largest share of the gross domestic product -- and wages the smallest share of GDP -- than at any time since records have been kept.

Hence, the Great Redistribution.

Some might say this doesn't really amount to a "redistribution" as we normally define that term, because government isn't redistributing anything. By this view, the declining wages, higher profits, and the surging bull market simply reflect the workings of the free market.

But this overlooks the fact that government sets the rules of the game. Federal and state budgets have been cut, for example -- thereby reducing overall demand and keeping unemployment higher than otherwise. Congress has repeatedly rejected tax incentives designed to encourage more hiring. States have adopted "right-to-work" laws that undercut unions. And so on.

If all this weren't enough, the tax system is rigged in favor of the owners of wealth, and against people whose income comes from wages. Wealth is taxed at a lower rate than labor.

Capital gains, dividends, and debt all get favorable treatment in the tax code - which is why Mitt Romney, Warren Buffet, and other billionaires and multimillionaires continue to pay around 12 percent of their income in taxes each year, while most of the rest of us pay at least twice that rate.

Among the biggest winners are top executives and Wall Street traders whose year-end bonuses are tied to the stock market, and hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose special "carried interest" tax loophole allows their income to be treated as capital gains. The wild bull market of 2013 has given them all fabulous after-tax windfalls.

America has been redistributing upward for some time -- after all, "trickle-down" economics turned out to be trickle up -- but we outdid ourselves in 2013. At a time of record inequality and decreasing mobility, America conducted a Great Redistribution upward.

Obama is a total failure

Obama is a total failure... as a crypto-Marxist.  We all know, despite his lies to the contrary, that he hates business deep down in his heart of hearts, that he really does everything he can to kill America's private enterprise, and yet, and yet... this.  Epic fail.

He gives us far-left ultra-liberals a bad name.  He desperately needs to brush up on his Engels and Saul Alinsky 101.

Obama Is The Fifth President To See The S&P 500 Double While In Office

May 25, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1ajQSbS

Be honest about taxes on rich capitalists

A lot of folks in the MSM, punditry, think tanks and lobbying firms are blowing a lot of smoke about tax hikes and the "fiscal cliff."  Most journalists are too lazy, or too intimidated, to contradict their BS.

This includes the corporate media's preemptive strikes against a possible increase in U.S. dividend tax rates. Thanks to one ultra-conservative reader I learned, inadvertently, that higher U.S. dividend tax rates in fact correlate, historically, with higher stock market returns!

Now, as I'm always quick to point out, correlation does not equal causation; nevertheless, this shows that economic performance is not doomed by relatively higher tax rates. Far from it.

When a Tax on the Rich Is Actually a Tax on the Rich

By Peter Hart 

December 3, 2012 | FAIR

URL: http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/12/03/when-a-tax-on-the-rich-is-actually-a-tax-on-the-rich/

Levy a transaction tax on Wall Street!

Professor Folbre's is right to support the tiny transaction tax on stock trades, which are oddly exempt from sales tax, unlike other economic transactions. For normal holders of stocks this tax would be virtually unnoticeable.

Still, I'm surprised she did not even mention that high-frequency "robot" traders have likely been responsible, at least partly, for wild stock swings over the past two weeks, with humans trying to catch up. High-frequency trading (HFT) also caused the "flash crash" on May 6, 2010. Well over 70% of trades in the U.S. are already performed by machines, since algorithm-driven computer traders may make many trades per second. If such a transaction tax would not discourage firms from using HFT strategies, it would at least cut our federal budget deficit -- by at least $175 billion per year!

A Sales Tax on Wall Street Transactions

By Nancy Folbre

August 22, 2011 | New York Times - Economix

Most of us pay state and local sales taxes on most things we buy, and most casino gambling is subject to state taxes ranging from up to 6.75 percent in Nevada to 55 percent on slot machines in Pennsylvania.

But speculative purchases of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments in the United States go untaxed but for a tiny fee (less than a half-cent) on stock trades that helps finance the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In Britain, by contrast, a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions raises about $40 billion a year. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany recently announced plans to introduce a similar tax in the 27 nations of the European Community.

It is variously called a "transactions tax," a "financial transactions tax," a "security transaction excise tax" or a Tobin tax (after the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin, who famously argued for its application to foreign exchange purchases in the late 1970s).

By any name, Wall Street hates it, because it would cut into trading profits. But proponents like Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research assert that it would primarily affect short-term "noise traders" and discourage speculation rather than productive investment.

Less speculation could lead to less volatility in prices, encouraging long-term investors.

Further, a sales tax on Wall Street of 0.5 percent could raise up to $175 billion in tax revenue a year, even if, by discouraging frequent trades, it cuts the total number of transactions in half.

A small financial transaction tax proposed by Representative Peter DiFazio, Democrat of Oregon, and supported by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act (with specific details of a co-sponsored bill still being negotiated) is likely to raise less revenue.

Plenty of highly respected economists support the basic concept, and plenty disagree. In a recent review of the literature, Neil McCulloch and Grazia Pacillo of the Institute of Development Studies in Britain conclude that it is unlikely to reduce speculation but nonetheless represents a relatively good source of tax revenue. A recent report by Thornton Matheson, published by the International Monetary Fund, expresses negative views.

An engaging summary of the pros and cons can be found in a videotaped debate sponsored by the Center for the Study of Responsive Law on July 8 as part of its "Debating Taboos" series.

My University of Massachusetts colleague Robert Pollin argues in favor, while James Angel of Georgetown argues against.

Professor Angel insists that short-term traders are not primarily speculators and describes them as a healthy part of the financial ecosystem that might be killed off. Professor Pollin's view, with which I agree, is that short-term trading has increased enormously in recent years, with no positive impacts on economic efficiency. In any case, I don't think a 0.5 percent tax on transactions will cause serious fatalities.

Professor Angel also points out that a tax on financial transactions will be passed on, at least in part, to all investors, with negative consequences for retirement savings. But all taxes are passed on, at least in part, to consumers. I agree with Professor Pollin when he argues that the effect of a financial transactions tax on most people would be very small compared with other sales taxes.

Economists point out that sales taxes discourage consumption, which is better than discouraging investments that can pay off in the future. But many consumption decisions that ordinary people make have important consequences for future productivity.

As Professor Pollin points out, current sales taxes bite those who buy materials to increase energy conservation in their homes or purchase a more fuel-efficient car.

My own research emphasizes that parental expenditures on children, as well as public spending on health and education, represent a form of investment in human capital.

Most state and local sales taxes are very regressive, with low-income families paying more as a percentage of their income. A proposed national sales tax, or a value-added tax, would have an even more negative impact on families at the bottom.

Our current tax policies favor speculative investment in financial instruments over productive investments in human capabilities. This imbalance helps explain why nurses' unions in the United States have been particularly outspoken advocates of a financial transactions tax.

As they put it: "Heal America. Tax Wall Street."

SF Fed: Boomers will drain equities markets

Great, yet another way the Boomers will screw us: At the same time their massive payouts will be passing like a bowling ball-sized kidney stone through Social Security's narrowly designed system, they'll be draining the stock market of value for the rest of us.

BTW, will we youngsters keep calling their overly-fecund parents "The Greatest Generation" when we're working our butts off supporting all their broods of aged children, not to mention our own 1.8 kids? In the coming years I bet we'll quietly retire the "Greatest" moniker along with the Boomers.

SF Fed Warns Baby Boomers May Wound Stock Market

By Michael S. Derby

August 22, 2011 | Wall Street Journal

The next quarter century or so could be a tough one for the stock market, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco warn.

In a paper released by the institution Monday, two of its staffers said the retirement of the Baby Boom generation stands to strip away from equities a key source of support. The ongoing wave of retirees won't crater the market, but they may well be "a factor holding down equity valuations over the next two decades," writes Zheng Liu and Mark Spiegel write.

As they see it, what the Baby Boomers have given to the market is something like what they will be taking away. Allowing for the "theoretical ambiguities," the economists noted "U.S. equity values have been closely related to demographic trends in the past half century" across several key metrics. "In the context of the impending retirement of baby boomers over the next two decades, this correlation portends poorly for equity values," Liu and Spiegel write.

As much as it is a problem for the market over the long haul, as retirees sell stocks to try to maintain their lifestyles, the "well known" nature of the troubles is also a problem for markets now. Indeed, if current investors now start pricing in the coming Baby Boomer headwind, they may "depress" stock prices.

"These demographic shifts may present headwinds today for the stock market's recovery from the financial crisis," the paper said.

Liu and Siegel allow that considerable uncertainty surrounds their work. Other important influences on the outlook for stocks are the performance of the bond market, as well as the appetites of foreign buyers. They cited China as one potential wild card, saying that nation and other emerging economies "may relax capital controls, which would allow their nationals to invest in U.S. equity markets." That could counter some of the drag generated by U.S. retirees.

There are, of course, even more risks that surround the stock market beyond what the paper flags. Equity prices have undergone considerable volatility of late after enjoying a sharp Federal-Reserve-engineered rally starting nearly a year ago. Equity investors are confronting a protracted period of economic weakness, and a central bank that appears to have few good options to restart growth. Should weakness prove longer-lasting than some expect, that itself may influence Baby Boomers' retirement plans, and thus change the outlook for the market.

S&P (Stupid and Poor) ratings

I'm not able to watch the squawking cable news media or listen to talk radio, so I wonder... Are Americans being told the truth, are they indeed absorbing the irony of what happened over the past few days?

Background, in case you've been living in a cave in Tora Bora: Last week, S&P downgraded U.S. Government debt from its highest rating of AAA one notch down to AA+. Deficit fetishists remarked with poorly concealed glee that this was proof of America's imminent day of fiscal reckoning. And of course Obama got most of the blame, even though idiotic S&P cited Washington politicians' inability to craft a coherent fiscal policy as the other main reason for its dubious downgrade -- and, as we all know, fiscal policy (spending, debt, and taxes - Section 8) is, constitutionally speaking, Congress's job.

I'm just ignoring for a moment the S&P's $2 trillion error in its math; or that S&P may broken SEC regulations by leaking news of its imminent downgrade to favored hedge fund traders who stood to make a buck on insider knowledge; or the fact that S&P was rating subprime crap AAA and gave Lehman an A rating a month before its collapse, which was a big reason for the Great Recession and the subsequent fiscal crisis which caused S&P to downgrade U.S. sovereign debt.

No, I'm ignoring all that for now.

What I want to highlight is the irony of how the markets reacted. You know, those all-knowing, self-correcting, magical markets which are best at everything? Yeah, well, after a panic of selling off stocks (the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ all tanked, not to mention international indexes), which was spurred, in part, by the S&P downgrade of U.S. Treasuries, investors tripped over themselves to put their money into... U.S. Treasuries. And so interest rates on U.S. Treasuries dropped to new lows.

In other words, a ratings crisis for U.S. Treasuries led to an abandonment of stocks and a boost in U.S. Treasuries.

I'm no market guru by any stretch, but if there's a time to buy stocks it's probably now, because this makes no f***ing rational sense.

'Ideological slander'? Euro-socialist stocks outperform U.S.

"Countries with typically high levels of government involvement in the economy, such as Sweden, Denmark and Canada, do not appear to have experienced stifled economic growth relative to countries where government involvement is more limited, like the US," according to a report by Stewart Partners.

Indeed, "many socialized governments provide critical support for business growth, including first class infrastructure built by the public sector, retraining of workers and public education systems that result in better-prepared workforces, comparative to the US."

This shouldn't come as a surprise, I mentioned it back in July 2010: "On four broad categories of economic freedom -- (1) legal structure and security of property rights; (2) access to sound money; (3) freedom to trade internationally; and (4) regulation --. the United States was slightly 'freer' than Sweden, the United Kingdom, Austria, Finland, and Switzerland. Meanwhile, Ireland, the Netherlands and, by a wide margin, Denmark were found to have freer markets."

See for yourself in the annual report on Economic Freedom of the World by the libertarian, Koch-funded CATO Institute to see how countries measure up.

Just remember: there is not a clear correlation between economic freedom and the relative size of the government's role in the economy.

U.S. Stocks Outperformed By France, Sweden Since Reagan Era

By Alex Wagner

June 20, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/stocks-socialized-us-countries-reagan_n_882270.html

Mark Cuban: Asset allocation is for suckers

Blogged the Dallas Mavs owner:

"That is a suggestion for a 'moderate investor'. Let me translate this all for you. 'I want you to invest 5pct in cash and the rest in 10 different funds about which you know absolutely nothing. I want you to make this investment knowing that even if there were 128 hours in a day and you had a year long vacation, you could not possibly begin to understand all of these products. In fact, I don't understand them either, but because I know it sounds good and everyone is making the same kind of recommendations, we all can pretend we are smart and going to make a lot of money. Until we don't.'

"Asset allocation is about making you a sucker."


Wall Street's new lie to Main Street – Asset Allocation
By Mark Cuban
January 24, 2011 | blog maverick

URL: http://blogmaverick.com/2011/01/24/wall-streets-new-lie-to-main-street-asset-allocation/

Don't let them tell you U.S. economy doesn't suck

Damn, this guy's good.

How the Financially Connected Prospered in a Decade where Wealth Evaporated for the Majority: S&P 500 Down 24 Percent for the Decade, Real Home Values down 3%, U.S. Dollar down 23%, and Unemployment back to 1980 Levels.
Posted by mybudget360

As we usher in the New Year the filthy rich are counting their blessings and must be very appreciative of the massive bailouts that protected their wealth. The top one percent of this country control 42 percent of all financial wealth so it shouldn't come as any surprise that most of the bailouts went to Wall Street and those that are tethered to it for income. As the stock market continues to rally Americans collecting food stamps stands at the highest number ever at 37 million. We also have 27 million Americans looking for work or are simply stringing a few hours together to keep some sort of paycheck coming in. The vast majority of Americans are simply exhaling a sigh of relief that the 2000s are now a thing of the past. Yet if something isn't changed radically in our system we are bound to enter another financial shock in the near term.

First, the S&P 500 is down a stunning 24.1 percent since the start of the decade. Yet Goldman Sachs managed to pull off almost an 80 percent gain during the same time:

So for the poor average American who simply dollar cost averaged into the stock market as every good corporatocracy banker would tell them, they would have fallen behind someone who simply dollar cost averaged into their mattress. Yet if you happened to dump your money with the government sponsored and back stopped Goldman Sachs you would have done much better. Ironically these bankers are the same people who created the financial instruments that sent our economy into a tailspin.

The average American is finally realizing that much of the corporate power in Washington is doing very little for them and doing more and more for Wall Street. So the stock market over the decade brought negative returns to Americans. How did the housing market do?

The median U.S. home price in November of 1999 came in at $137,600 and ended November 2009 at $172,600. This 25 percent gain is wiped out once we factor in the Federal Reserve inflating away the U.S. Dollar. Housing over the decade is actually down 3 percent. This is where the largest store of the average American wealth is stashed and it went negative for the decade. Yet somehow the ultra rich seemed to make out like bandits with all the bailouts even though are economy was still fizzling out from two mega bubbles. There is a reason they call it a golden parachute.

Let us recap. The stock market brought negative returns both nominally and in real terms for the decade and housing is actually down in real terms. So how did Americans do over the decade in the employment front?

The unemployment rate is the highest it has been since the early 1980s. If we look at the employment population ratio we will see that our economy is still trending to the downside. Yet the corporatocracy is happy to feed the propaganda line that the average American is better off. Really? How so? Once the bubble decade wealth imploded the typical American is now in a worse position. The national debt also exploded during this decade. So housing values cratered, the stock market is still massively down, and employment is still in shambles. Yet we are to believe things are just fine. People are now finally waking up to the reality that the current system is designed to rip them off and steal from them at every point in the road.

Take credit cards and bailouts for example. Some credit card companies are hiking fees up on customers before new regulations hit this year. These are the same companies that benefitted handsomely from the corporatocracy bailouts. This money came from the average American yet they are sticking it to them each and every other way. For example, last month I was stuck by a "savings withdrawal fee" from Chase. I never saw this before. So I called up the bank and asked them what this was. It amounted to a $12 fee for each transaction. As it turns out, the wonderful Federal Reserve through Regulation D yanks money out for people making more than 6 ACH transfers per month from savings accounts. So if you wanted to move your money from say your toxic too big to fail bank to say a local community bank, make sure you don't do more than 6 transfers for the month or you are going to be hit with a $12 fee for this. Insane policies like this make me realize that something is going to give in this decade.

But over the decade our U.S. dollar must have gone up right? Let us take a look:

The U.S. dollar is down 23.5 percent for the decade. So if any of you actually left the country and spent abroad you would quickly realize how weak the dollar has gotten. This has to do with the massive government spending over the decade. Over the holiday Congress voted to up the debt ceiling since we are breaking through every imaginable barrier possible. Take a look at this below chart:

We went from $5.7 trillion to over $12 trillion in Federal government public debt in 10 years. And what did we really get? We just went through countless data points and where are we better off? The reality is the money is being dumped into the vortex of the banking and corporate interest that run this country. It is amazing that even with unemployment claims the media is championing this as a good sign yet they don't even bother to look at emergency unemployment claims that are flying off the chart! That is, they are focusing once again on the wrong data.

So it is going to be a challenging decade for average Americans. The economy flew off the cliff and instead of reforming the system things are back to normal and the corporatocracy keeps on stealing from the population. The mega wealthy are doing fine and the gap between rich and poor is the largest it has been since the Great Depression. Welcome to the new gilded age. Our lost decade is now in the bag. Are we up for another one? Let us hope not.

Time to retire 401(k) plans

I've distilled this interesting article's most important points below. These statistics on Americans' retirement savings are scary.

I'm especially intrigued by the idea of retirement insurance, whether it is a public system, or run privately run with government regulation. The question that comes to mind is what the issuer of that insurance will do with savers' contributions? Invest them in the market, presumably – the same market which is exposed to the bubbles and unpredictable fluctuations that can wipe out retirees' life savings in no time. But I guess the beauty of this idea is that it avoids the problem of timing: by making retirement savings a collective endeavor, the ones who are unlucky enough to retire in a bad market year are covered by everybody else. By pooling everyone's risk, it should all even out. (Hmmm... kinda reminds me of another big current issue!)

Why It's Time to Retire the 401(k)

By Stephen Gandel

October 9, 2009 TIME

[I]n your early years, your 401(k)'s growth is driven mostly by contributions. You control your own destiny. But the longer you hold a 401(k), the more market-exposed it becomes. It's a twist that breaks the most basic rule of financial planning.

The Society of Professional Asset-Managers and Record Keepers says nearly 73 million Americans, or just under 50% of our working population, now have a 401(k). The average 401(k) has a balance of $45,519. Even worse, 46% of all 401(k) accounts have less than $10,000.

In order for 401(k) plans to succeed, workers have to stash savings regularly for about 30 years. Most accounts haven't been around that long.

[T]he past year has shown that even with our added savings, we are at much greater risk today of our bank accounts running empty than when employer-guaranteed pensions were the norm. … 44% of all Americans are in danger of going broke in their postwork years.

A 2007 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) estimated that, on the basis of historical returns, by 2040 the average 401(k) of a near retiree would grow to an inflation-adjusted $451,944. That money, spread over 30 years, could replace at least 50% of the average retiree's income. Add Social Security and even highly paid workers will probably earn more than 80% of their preretirement income. "The only reason these accounts haven't lived up to their potential is that they haven't gotten enough time," says James Poterba, president of the NBER, who co-authored the study.

The average 55-to-64-year-old should have a 401(k) balance of $320,000. In fact, at the end of 2007, the average 401(k) of a near retiree held just $78,000 — and that was before the market meltdown.

Remember, the biggest factor in whether the 401(k) works as designed has to do with when you retire. If the market rises that year, you're fine. If you retired last year, you're toast. And the chances of your becoming a victim of this huge flaw in the 401(k) plan are pretty high. The market fell in four of the nine years since the beginning of the decade. That means anyone retiring this decade had a nearly 50% chance of leaving work in a down market. In fact, your chances of retiring into a down market are even greater than that: forced retirements spike in recessions just as the stock market is tanking.

What the ERIC plan and others like it are essentially proposing is a form of retirement insurance. So instead of putting 6% of your salary into a 401(k) or some other investment account, each pay period you would send 6% of your check to a retirement-insurance provider. The policy would work similarly to a traditional pension in that it would provide a guaranteed monthly check equal to about a quarter of your final pay, from when you quit working until you die. Some employers might even be willing to pay the annual premium as a perk. If not, employees would pay for it much as they currently fund their own 401(k)s. But the policy would be portable. Contribute for 30 years and you would be guaranteed income in retirement, no matter how many employers you worked for. Combine your retirement-insurance check with the money you get from Social Security, which can equal as much as 50% of final pay, and presto: you have something approaching retirement security.

But many policy experts say some type of change to our retirement-savings system is coming. First of all, given the market carnage, there is some backing for the idea — not to mention anger and disappointment among retirees who can't really retire. Recent opinion polls show that people would be willing to give up the flexibility of a 401(k) for a guaranteed return. What's more, the fact that ERIC supports a guaranteed plan is encouraging. "Whether the 401(k) is a perfect plan or even the right plan is something that is being questioned in Congress," says Democratic Representative George Miller of California, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. "When you have seen the market's ability to create bubbles, you've got to ask whether the people trying to save for retirement should have to ride that risk."

Markets rally to 2009 highs; Obama not to blame

Just remember: these gains for the DOW, S&P 500, and NASDAQ, plus lower than expected unemployment, do not mean Obama is doing a good job.  They do not mean the stimulus is working.  The stimulus, after 4 months, has already failed.  

Only if the markets fall are we allowed to give Obama credit.  That's the way it works.  Got it straight?  Good. 

Stocks spike to new 2009 highs 

Wall Street rallies as investors saw signs of stabilization on the labor front. Dow closes at highest level this year. 

By Alexandra Twin

July 30, 2009 | CNNMoney.com

URL: http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/30/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?cnn=yes