The Animus behind DOL’s ‘Amicus Briefs’
By filing 'amicus briefs' on behalf of the corporate plan sponsors—the defendants—in several participant-led, ERISA-based class action suits, the Trump DOL signals its alignment with the corporations.
Bracing for Health Costs in Retirement
Not including long-term care costs or the Medicare surcharges for high-income beneficiaries, HealthView Services projects healthcare costs of $581,587 in today’s dollars ($839,596 in future dollars), over an affluent...
Pacific Life and Principal Add Payout Options to 401(k)s
The three 401(k) annuities described here differ in their pre-retirement crediting mechanisms, their flexibility for the owners, and in the scope of their guarantees. (This article includes current map...
Caution: Children Might Impoverish Their Parents
Imagine that an economist in 1964 shocked the Boomers with a prediction that they would need tens of trillions to raise their as-yet unborn children. The claim that the...
A Beneficiary of Social Security: Equities
Social Security is too often regarded as a zero-sum game between cohorts and time-periods. But it can help give retirees the risk-capacity to own and hold equities, exploit the...
ChatGPT on ‘Dispersion’ and ‘Beta’ in Private Credit
I recently asked ChatGPT to help translate some of the private credit patois that I heard at recent conferences. People were talking about 'dispersion.' And they were saying, 'Private...
Bermuda Short-Sellers
Short-sellers, including hedge funds, sense that the bespoke loans that asset managers have sold to life insurers could fail in the next financial crisis. They may not know it,...
Nashville, Honky Tonks, and Private Credit
In April, at a conference in Nashville, I mingled with the people who turn bundles of below-investment-grade loans into stock-like or bond-like assets. They perform the valuable service of...
Corebridge-Equitable Merger: An Aftershock of 2008
In 2008, Corebridge was still AIG’s retirement business and Equitable had not yet separated from French insurance giant AXA. (Back then, ING-US hadn’t become Voya and MetLife hadn’t yet...
What’s Behind Annuities’ Latest Sales Record?
Gross sales of annuities approached the half-trillion-dollar mark in 2025. Net inflows, though positive, are much more modest. If demand for lifetime income solutions, as opposed to safe tax-deferred...
‘Why Social Security Can’t Go Broke’
Here's a link to a chapter on Social Security that I contributed to 'The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory.'
CITs: Private Credit’s Pathway into 401(k) Plans
'Everybody—all the asset managers—are trying to pick CIT dance partners so that they can have product in 401(k) plans,' said Chris Randall at SEI Trust Company....
Private Credit Anxiety and the Bermuda Triangle
The share prices of Apollo, KKR, and F&G Annuities & Life have fallen significantly over the past 14 months. Are investors skittish about their exposure to private credit? Or...
Australia’s ‘Super’ Gets a Presidential Shout-Out
Australia's mandatory defined contribution retirement savings system is "a 'good' system that has 'worked out well' for Australia, the president said from the Roosevelt Room. Mr. Trump is flanked...
Kyle Busch’s Crash Course in IUL
An indexed universal life policy demands about as little maintenance as an eight-cylinder, 750-horsepower, 200-mph NASCAR stock car. And in the hands of an unskilled, or untrustworthy driver, or...
How the ‘Harkin Amendment’ Enabled the ‘Bermuda Triangle’
My bias regarding the Bermuda Triangle' was confirmed when I read “The Law of Capitalism” (Yale, 2025) and “The Code of Capital” (Princeton, 2019) by Columbia law professor Katharina...
The Year of Living Uncertainly
The life insurance industry is sensitive to changes in interest rates and in regulations, and President Trump appears bent on lowering rates and removing regulations that he doesn't...
