Description: In this paper, the authors have analyzed the Cash Balance pension and contributions using the methods and principles of financial economics, to give a market consistent evaluation of the costs of the CB liability.

Description: This essay explores the role that the emerging defined contribution retirement system may be playing in the growth of wealth inequality in the United States. The current system leaves many Americans with little or no retirement savings. Those with higher accumulation levels appear to invest proportionally more in equities, which may have an exponential effect of balances over long time periods. The author hypothesizes that willingness to take investment risk involves the relationship between the amount an investor has accumulated and what she/he needs in order to cover basic costs of living. This is one reason that investors with greater accumulation levels may be able to earn higher rates of return. The essay concludes by suggesting that the U.S. defined contribution system should include all workers and provide additional fiduciary guidance. Examples reforms, both in the U.S. and other countries, are provided.

Description: This is a short story on the retirement income calculator.

Description: The article makes reference to how the intervention by government agencies and institutions into the financial marketplace are creating distortions. This artificial tampering into market mechanisms will likely result in major financial dislocations down the road as natural economic forces (coined by the term "invisible hand") eventually are allowed to come into play.

Description: Feature article summarizing a talk given by Andrew Lo at the SOA 2009 Annual Meeting on the credit crisis and why risk management failed to stop the excessive risk taking.

Description: This article presents some observations on inverted yield curves of U.S. Treasury securities and the correlation of volatility of Treasury security interest rates with their absolute level. The time covered by the study is December 1953 to December 1988. From Society of Actuaries Financial Reporting Monograph, M-AS99-1.

Description: In this session, we will explore investment solutions that aim to maintain the long-term viability of a pension plan, with considerations on hedging interest rates, credit, inflation, longevity and other risks, while accounting for the many particularities associated with underlying liabilities and their corresponding ramifications.

Description: This article gives insight into the economic atmosphere in the Netherlands after the financial collapse in the United States.

Description: The euro, the single European currency, can significantly change the way the world does business and will have some important implications on the ability of the United States and its currency to dominate the world's political and financial system.

Description: This paper, written following a UK Actuarial meeting, is divided into three parts. Taken together, the three parts intend to provide the reader with an overview of the first 101 years of financial economics, with particular attention on those developments that are of special interest to actuaries.