Nevin's Data "Points"

“It was a gray, chilly morning in midtown Manhattan and a line of unemployed, mostly white-collar workers, stretched for blocks around the Radisson Hotel. More than 1,000 middle managers, stockbrokers, consultants, secretaries and receptionists had come hoping to find a job. It was called a career fair, but there was no merriment - only a whiff of desperation.”—Intro to “60 Minutes” segment, “401(k) Recession.” By now, you have no doubt either watched, had recommended to you, or at least heard about the “60 Minutes” special that ran a week ago Sunday. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. No, it wasn’t very long (less than 15 minutes), but it was certainly enough to fuel the fires of those who are anxious to put the 401(k) out of our misery. Short as it was, you could basically cleave the segment into two propositions: that retirement savings shouldn’t be invested in stocks (or least not so much in stocks), and that fees—and hidden fees a

ERISA’s 404(c) has long been held out by some as something of a magic talisman: Comply with its strictures, they claim, and you have an iron-clad defense against participant lawsuits —and, IMHO, the implication is a defense against ALL participant lawsuits. Of course, any number of ERISA experts will tell you that it is nearly impossible to satisfy those strictures, certainly not for every transaction (and mind you, 404(c) is transactional protection)—not that that seems to dissuade plan fiduciaries from trying, nor plan advisers from purporting to help them achieve that end. Nor are plan fiduciaries, or the participants and beneficiaries they support, ill-served by those efforts. That said, I have long been surprised at how broadly the judiciary has been willing to extend those protections. Good news if you’re the plan sponsor getting sued, of course—but not-so-good if you’re a plan fiduciary looking for some consistency in the law. The most recent example was Hecker v. Deere (see

Last week, I attended a media briefing sponsored by BGI titled “Restoring Confidence: Saving the Future of Retirement.” That session featured insights from some new participant research, some perspectives about the current plan-trends landscape, some thoughts on annuitization in 401(k)s, and even some thoughts from a congressman who knows more than a little about pensions and 401(k)s. Some random thoughts from, and stimulated by, that session: • Research conducted by the Boston Research Group (BRG) (and sponsored by BGI) indicates that 33% of participants have put off looking at their statements because of the recent financial turmoil. I’m betting a like number never looks at their statements anyway. • No news is actually bad news. Not only can participant statements provide some much needed motivation to do (more of) the right things, people might be surprised to see how well their accounts have held up. • People have seen so many reports about how poorly indexes like the Dow an

Those who try to figure out when certain trends reach a tipping point—who try to figure out when things have crested, the beginning of the end of the beginning—should note that we may have reached that point about three weeks ago—when I started “tweeting.” And, no, I wasn’t commemorating the arrival of spring by making bird calls. “Tweeting,” if you haven’t heard, is reportedly now all the rage as a means of communication. Well, sort of. See, you “tweet” by establishing an account on twitter.com (it’s free). And, once there, you can keep everybody up to date on what you’re doing. Well, sort of. What you actually do is update everybody who has signed up for your updates (“followers”). And, by update, what I mean is that you can tell those following your activities what you’re doing…in 140 characters (or less). Not 140 words…140 CHARACTERS. About half the length of this paragraph…. Now, I’ve been aware of Twitter and its capabilities for some time now. But, for a guy who long