Retirement Finance in the Wake of the Bubble and Longer-Term Implications May 6, 2009

Cosponsored by American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution.

The deflated credit bubble has brought huge losses and tensions to retirement finance. It has caused severe underfunding of corporate pensions and a deepening crisis among state and municipal pension plans. In addition, in an ill-advised move, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation shifted its asset allocation toward equities just in time for the market crash, and Social Security's annual surplus has all but disappeared.

Are the 1950s ideas of "retirement" and its financing viable fifty years later? What long-term reforms are required? These and other questions will be discussed by retirement finance experts, including former Social Security Administration principal deputy commissioner Andrew G. Biggs, now at AEI; labor economist Gary Burtless and Douglas J. Elliott, former principal researcher for the Center on Federal Financial Institutions, both from the Brookings Institution; and David C. John of the Heritage Foundation, codeveloper of the automatic individual retirement accounts proposal. AEI's Alex J. Pollock will moderate.

Official Website: http://www.aei.org/events/type.upcoming,eventID.1922,filter.all/event_detail.asp