But corporate managers are also to blame for searching high and low to find actuaries who would supply such inaccurate forecasts in order to lower pension costs and improve profits.
The civil-service unions are equally clever in arguing that the abuses stem from the pay structure: the ministries like to keep basic pay rates low in order to minimise their pension contributions and other social charges.
Yet a wicked combination of falling investment returns and declining annuity rates means that workers should be saving even more in order to secure a decent pension.
As Cato Institute economist Jagadeesh Gokhale finds, the average European country would need to set aside 8 percent of its economic output each year in order to fully finance future pension obligations.
Regardless of the fact that the fault clearly lies with management failing to plan prudently, workers will pay the price by surrendering pension benefits in order to enable these companies to survive.
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They need to put in a Pension Credit claim in order to receive the payments.
Mr. Adachi himself has performed some nip and tucks on his pension reform initiative in order to neutralize the labor attacks on him during his mayoral campaign.
That was the same argument the financial industry used to kill off the defined-benefit pension plans our grandparents relied on in order to sell a new generation of savers on the idea that 401-Ks had the potential for higher returns.
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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent a letter to lawmakers informing them that some pension and health benefits would be suspended in order to free up borrowing authority until the end of February.
Scaling back those promises, for example by raising the pension age, is a prerequisite for getting public finances in order just about everywhere, even if it will not do much to reduce the deficit in the short term.
In our opinion, it is imperative that fiduciaries scrutinize investments in order to determine whether the investments are consistent with the investment objectives of the pension.
As for the viability of these funds, managers, with the collaboration of actuaries, accounting firms and bankers invested the funds in progressively more risky ventures in order to get higher yields to further reduce the participation of the employers to the pension funds.
Ms Kjaersgaard wants to keep early retirement as it is, but she might agree to phasing it out and raising the pension age in exchange for stricter immigration controls and firmer law-and-order policies.
Because the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a federal agency tasked with insuring private pension plans, has long encouraged large companies to delay needed changes to their retirement plans in order to bring labor costs under control.
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"In order to fund this we will hold a review with the aim of bringing forward the increase in the state pension age to 66 but no earlier than 2016 for men and 2020 for women, " she said.
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