Profits, Politics and the Ruin of Fannie & Freddie

Here is the first of three excerpts from "Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance," the compact, illuminating new book by four NYU Stern School of Business professors about the fatally flawed structure of the GSEs.

RIIA ‘Gets’ Open Architecture

Few organizations seem to understand the ascendancy of "open architecture" better than the Retirement Income Industry Association, whose mantra is "the view across the silos." Here's a report on its Spring Conference, held this week.

Take the ‘Gauss’ Work Out of Saving

Using "non-Gaussian" analysis, Jim Otar has created a benchmark for evaluating retirement savings vehicles--and discovered that cautious savers might want to hold fewer equities.

Morningstar’s ‘Secret Sauce’

Speaking at the 2011 Morningstar/Ibbotson Conference in Orlando, Roger Ibbotson (above) described low-liquidity as a largely unrecognized source of alpha in stocks and mutual funds.
Featured

When Herds Get Overconfident, Run for Cover

Steve Utkus of the Vanguard Retirement Research Center proposes a four-part model to explain the psychological dynamics behind the most recent financial bubble, and similar bubbles.
News

Events that may interest you

The Retirement Industry Conference is coming up soon, to be followed by several other events that RIJ readers might want to attend.

Did Income Inequality Cause the Crisis?

Those with surplus money naturally lend to those who need money. But, as two IMF experts show, disaster can occur when too much money is lent for consumption and the process goes on too long.

State pension reform may undermine Britain’s DB plans

Britain's plan to simplify the state pension to a single-tier plan could hurt private DB plans by ending "contracting-out," the practice of substituting contributions to a private plan for contributions to the second state plan.

The Bucket

Brief or late-breaking items from Janus, ING, AXA Equitable Life, Morningstar, eRollover, Curian Capital and TrimTabs.