{"id":326500,"date":"2025-12-05T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326500\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:46:12","slug":"wall-street-is-reinventing-the-pension-plan-to-solve-the-pension-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326500\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street is reinventing the pension plan to solve the pension crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the 2010s ride-share wars, the joke was that the brightest minds in Silicon Valley had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/jan\/14\/silicon-valley-marketing-student-loan\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">reinvented the public bus<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the brightest minds on Wall Street, in tackling the retirement crisis left by the decline of traditional pension plans, have reinvented\u2026 the traditional pension plan.<\/p>\n<p>That begins with \u201cTrump accounts,\u201d which would seed every US newborn with $1,000 in an investment account. Michael Dell\u2019s $6.25 billion gift this week will supplement that for slightly older kids who missed the cutoff. The government is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/08\/democratizing-access-to-alternative-assets-for-401k-investors\/\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">rewriting rules<\/a> to allow that money to be invested not just in stocks and bonds but in private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure, and Wall Street is \u2014\u00a0obviously \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/finance\/investing\/wall-street-wants-in-on-the-trump-accounts-for-babies-05b70e74?mod=hp_lead_pos3\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">salivating<\/a> at the chance to manage it all.<\/p>\n<p>The model, former SEC chairman and current SDNY Chief Jay Clayton <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wGtloVCXfvc\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">suggested<\/a> to me at our The  Ledger live event this week, is \u201ca well-run pension fund\u2026 invested across American industry as much as possible\u201d \u2014 like, he said, Australia. There, a national system of mandatory wage-garnishment has created a $4.5 trillion complex of \u201csuperannuation\u201d funds \u2014 an astounding $300,000 per worker \u2014 that\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.superannuation.asn.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Investment-flows-and-asset-allocation.pdf\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">invested<\/a> mostly in Australian stocks and property, with enough left over for the country to punch well above its weight as an international investor. The US Social Security trust fund has about $15,000 per employed person today, and it\u2019s clipping Treasury coupons.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ed41d651dc92897a8bd115bf66ae5b83d7f9f5bf-2132x1768.png\" alt=\"A chart showing how Australia\u2019s $4.5T superannuation funds are invested.\" width=\"800\" height=\"663\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"styles_imageEmbed__QsLwb styles_fullContentArea__zXct_\" style=\"color:transparent\"\/><\/p>\n<p>This may sound like a justification for a Wall Street money grab. But the best case for it is psychological. The gap between how the economy is doing (mostly good) and how people feel about it (mostly bad) has been the defining political factor for two successive White Houses now.<\/p>\n<p>As BlackRock CEO Larry Fink <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/article\/03\/12\/2025\/blackrock-ceo-calls-for-social-security-reform\" class=\"styles_linkEmbed__SNmaX\" rel=\"no-referrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told me earlier this year<\/a>: \u201cYou\u2019re detached from the economy, and you don\u2019t feel like you\u2019re winning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the 2010s ride-share wars, the joke was that the brightest minds in Silicon Valley had reinvented the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,133,131,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-326500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}